Speech Development at 22.5 months

Speech development with Ben and Ethan is very different… Ben is a little chatterbox who says too many words to count. Ethan is our strong and silent type who says about 20 words.

ETHAN

This morning we took Ethan to a speech pathology consult to get her opinion on his speech development. She took a history, and listened to our stories of his speech and language skills. She said she is very happy with his hearing, comprehension and ability to follow commands. She believes that he is just slow to develop in speech, but will get there eventually….. just a little late. Just for our own records, here’s a list of Ethan’s words:

Words he uses appropriately - Mummy, Mumma, Mum, Ben, Benny, Nana, Grandma, go, no, uh-oh, ta, hi, bye

Words he mimics – bubba, daddy, tree, car, cheese, oh-man, backpack, zazy (our cat)

A few weeks ago, we decided we’d try to teach the boys (particularly Ethan) some simple sign language to help communication. The speech pathologist was very impressed (and so are we) that Ethan has picked up signing very quickly.

He can now sign: - eat, drink, more, help, cat, bird and book.

She gave us lots of information on speech and language development, how to help Ethan learn to speak. She also gave us some information about sign language and examples of some more key word signing. Research shows baby/toddler signing helps speech development. We look forward to teaching Ethan more signs over the next few weeks. (videos of signing to come)

BENJAMIN

Benjamin’s speech is moving along in leaps and bounds. He repeats almost everything we say. He is ADDICTED to reading books. He has a few favourites each day, and us poor mummies get really sick of the same book over and over. We read so many books a day, and we really do like the fact that he is so interested in books, and we encourage it daily. His favourites at the moment are books that have pictures of objects with their names. He repeats the words after we say them.

Ben is now speaking in 2-3 word phrases. A few days ago early in the morning, when he’d just woken up he said to me “Mummy, where’s Mumma?” I answered “at work”. About 2 hours later I asked Ben “Where’s Mumma?” and he answered “work”.

Today as we walked through the car park at the shopping centre we passed 3 cars. As we walked past Ben said “green car, blue car, white car”, pointed at each car as he went past it. Tracie and I were totally amazed. He got all 3 colours right!! We had no idea he knew his colours that well. We regularly try to teach the boys about colours with their blocks and other toys, but we have never really had much success with it – until now.

Also, this evening I was outside doing some garden work with Tracie and the boys. Tracie started to take the boys inside for some dinner and Ben stopped, looked at me and said “Mummy, are you coming?”

It’s incredible to watch his speech and language skills developing so fast. He learns several new words a day.

One of Ben’s latest phrases is “Ahhh, a morphie”. (meaning he’s seen the object he’s talking about) I have tried and tried to work out what a morphie (or maybe it’s amorphie) is, but so far I haven’t worked it out. He’s said it about 5-6 times in the last 3-4 days. I look forward to knowing what he’s talking about!!