Language Explosion

On Timmy's first birthday he was saying about 8 words. By his 15 month well child visit, he lost all his words. Being a worried mother, I talked to his doctor about it. I was frightened that something was wrong. His doctor decided to refer him to early intervention. At about 16 months, the nice folks from early intervention (with who I now work, by the way) came over an did an evaluation of him. At that point, he had started saying a few things again, but he was slightly behind. They felt he was teetering on the edge, so they went ahead an approved him for speech therapy twice per month. After about 3 months of speech therapy, together with the therapist, we decided that he no longer needed speech therapy services. At about 19 months, his vocabulary was about 95 words. Suddenly, he was at the opposite end of the spectrum and saying a lot more than was expected of him.

I am telling you all of this, because he has really blown me away lately with the things he is saying. Tonight, I gave him ketchup with his dinner, per his request. He said "dip your chicken on it." I couldn't believe it. I picked him up at daycare one day and he said to, "I've got to find my blanket." One month ago, at his 24 month visit, the doctor asked how many words he was stringing together. At the time he was putting 3 words together, and she was impressed with that. She said she only expects 24 month old toddlers to be putting together 2 words. So, now, here's my 25 month old stringing together 5 words.



I used to teach first grade, and I was driven crazy by all the parents that insisted they had gifted children. This is not to tell you my child is a genius, I'm sure he isn't. My point, however, is this: kids do their thing in their own time. Sometimes they just aren't ready when we think they should be.



I can not believe how worried I was 10 months ago. He wasn't ready to talk.