Lois, several hundred signed words at 18 months is awesome. Isn’t it amazing? I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t use signing with their little ones. Imagine all that you would have missed him say if you didn’t teach him to sign. And that’s great that he said “ellow.” Isn’t it fun? 
Oh he makes me laugh all day long. I always get him to look at me when I’m giving him into trouble - we’re at the “pause before I look up with a really big grin”/ “I will look but only out of the very corner of my eye” stage. It’s hard to stick to your principles, so cute. lol
I feel a little sorry for him as we are amongst purely Spanish speakers so with all his signs & now his English, hardly anyone understands him despite his best efforts. Spanish is still a little behind verbally but it’s beginning to come. Some words I still sign to give him a clue but I can ask quite a few things now, “How do you say pineapple in Spanish” or vice versa etc & out it comes quick as a blink.
He has two books, the one you named is the latest one. I thought I ought to start with his first, Late-Talking Children, before going to the second. As that title suggests, Einstein also was a late talker. It might take me a while, I’m reading about 4 books right now at about a chapter per night (so very slow going at the moment)
I have read the Einstein book a long time ago. I forgot the author. 
I had issues with it. Mostly because I deal with a lot of mothers who have children in Early Intervention and doing IEP. My son included. I am a huge advocate for early intervention, and I believe that if your child’s speech, or other development is delayed that it doesn’t hurt to seek services. They are free for qualifying children.
I have known many of these mothers to regret waiting so long to seek services because everyone has a story about some kid who didn’t say anything until an advanced age 3-5 and VOILIA! They just started talking in sentences.
Despite all the anecdotal stories in the Einstein Syndrome, it is not the norm for children not to talk or try to at least make sounds and interact.
I should note, there is a big difference between a late talking child and a child that does not talk early.
Korrale, I thought a late talking child meant a child that does not talk early. Please could you kindly explain what you mean here? Thank you.
I strongly agree. Although it is often as case of simply talking late, the consequences of ignoring the signs can be huge. Most of the families I see (as psychologist involved in diagnosis of autism) received false reassurances that things would be ok. For many children, this means years of prime early intervention time wasted.
That is not to say that it is always a problem if the child does not talk early, just that people should never ignore their worries. I’d much rather be an overly cautious parent who seeks out speech therapy than one who is filled with regret
There are a set of norms or averages for children to talk. A set amount of words by a certains age etc.
Let me highlight a few off the top of my head. By 12 months they should use most hard sounds like b, p, g. By 18 months they should have an arsenal or words, but they don’t have to be pronounced correctly. Ma for milk and Buh for ball are common.
By 2 they should be speaking in couplets. “Ball please” or “milk mama” their pronounciaton will be improving and they may go from say duh or even doga for dog.
By 3 they should speak in pronouns I, me, you etc instead of using proper names, Timmy for I/me and mama for you. Their tenses should start to amend themselves and they have picked up on grammar clues. They may have said walked for walk, but say goed for go. By this stage they should also be speaking in more complex and even complete sentences. “I went to the store” instead of “goed store” or even “Timmy went store”. 85% of what a three year old says to a stranger should be understood. By 4 it should be 100% though some things may still have pronounciaton issues, fwip for flip, or twuck for truck.
An early talker does these things earlier than the normal age range. A late or delayed talker does it after this age range. A non talker is severally delayed and non verbal and unable to talk. A regressed talker once talked, then lost that ability. My son was a regressed, non verbal until about 2.5, though he could sign, and now he is condidered a later talker.
Seastar,
We went the early intervention route after my son had several speech regressions. And he was hitting pretty much every red flag for autism. Now he seems to be outgrowing most of those. He is still being monitored for displaying high functioning autism signs. He already has hyposensory SPD, and is still socially awkward.
If it were not for EI we would not know what to do with his sensory issues and I would not have worked diligently on things like eye contact. We do PRT at home with him. I would hate to know how different he would have been without all this.
None of my kids were early talkers. My oldest a girl didn’t talk much until 2. I got worried and had her evaluated but she didn’t qualify. At 2 she took right off and was speaking in sentences shortly after. She was always very articulate right from the start. My next a boy ended up in speech therapy at 19 months but in retrospect he would have taken off without it. He started talking around 2.25 but was missing a lot of sounds. As he gained more of the simple sounds his speech finally took off and he made substitutions. He graduated at 2.5 age appropriate. At 4 he ended back in speech through the school district strictly for articulation. His articulation is very poor. He is vocabulary and sentence structure is fine but he is missing sounds and leaves off endings. Strangers can’t really understand him. I didn’t realize how bad it was until his preschool teacher told me he talks a lot but I can’t understand him. I understood him and a lot of the sounds he were missing were age appropriate until recently so I thought he was ok but he needs help. His articulation is very poor. I thought my youngest would end up a late talker too when she wasn’t talking at 16 months but she started talking shortly after that and was putting words together at 20 months. I think her speech is pretty average definitely not advanced. I don’t count her as a late talker since she started putting words together before 2 but she wasn’t a early talker either. She is 2 years and 2 months now and can put 3-4 words together and has a decent size vocabulary and parrots a lot but her vocabulary isn’t huge and she isn’t speaking in complete sentences yet. I can’t understand everything she says so I hope she won’t go down the path of her brother but she does use more sounds and is ahead of where he was at the same time.
I’m not sure why my kids were all on the late side. My son actually picks up on concepts the fastest even though he was the latest talker. His articulation is very poor but he has no developmental delays. Although I do think he has sensory issues and I worry about him socially. It wasn’t enough to get help from the school district for those issues. I was a really early talker but my husband was a late talker. I do talk to my kids but I am an introvert and probably don’t talk as much as others.
My son is just like yours TheyCan.
He is 18 months now and can sign, understand a lot but apparently he only say what he wants. He sometimes repeat a complex word and never say that again.
But I’m not worried. I think it’s because me and my wife also doesn’t talk to much.
Since this is an old post, I’m just curious how are your kids now about talking.
I never commented on the original post but this is my son’s progress so far in terms of speech -
5 months - he said mama - initially I think he didn’t mean mama but after saying it for a while and watching my reaction he gathered that it must refer to me.
11-12 months - first “word” brrrrmmm for car, and then shortly after he started to say car.
15 months - vocabularly of around 50 words of english (similar number in the other two languages he was exposed to) but he would say ‘purr’ instead of ‘purple’ and ‘yell’ instead of yellow.
18 months - two syllable words
19 months - couplets
20 months - sentences but very simple ones such as ‘This is xxx’
24 months - can say 5-7 words sentences if he likes and is starting to join sentences, but most time it’s still some vesions of three word sentences or just couplets.
I don’t think he’s very advanced with speech consider I have heard stories of 12 months old talking in sentences, but I think he’s doing alright for a boy.
From looking at the toddlers around me, the big secret of early talkers seem to be those who are surrounded by family and friends who speak to the child directly. I think hearing just one parent/carer regularly was less effective at reinforcing the language.
I read a book called ‘baby talk’ by Sally Ward which I would recommend. Basically the message I took away was that parents should spend half an hour a day on ‘child-led ’ talking, i.e. labelling at the objects the child is looking at or manipulating, starting with just one word or couplets, and built up from there as the child’s language skill mature. Basically parents’ should be a small step ahead of the child. For example, if the child said - “this is a car”, then the parent responds by saying slowly “Yes, this is a blue car parking there”. And expand the sentences that little bit more will help them to build up their language skills to form more complex sentence structure.
For me, I think using Little Reader helped because most of my baby’s verbal vocabulary are words that were part of the curriculum. I also talk to her a LOT. I point, name and label the items in the house and I explain things to her. Everytime we go to the mall, my husband would say, I’m so noisy because I point and name almost everything. I would also get funny looks from other people at the mall lol So far I think it’s working because at 13 months, my baby girl can say more than 50 words and she is very assertive in telling us if she wants or dislikes something (saying and signing more-more if she likes something and shaking her head and saying no-no-no if she doesn’t like the food or any activity). She can say a few phrases too like mommy/daddy eat (if she wants to eat), go up, go down, mommy/daddy bye bye
I actually think there is a secret. All of our children had a full (100+ words) vocabulary at a year old and could have a very clear conversation with some fairly advanced thinking by two years old. I would say the following would be the main tips to follow:
- Talk to them constantly.
- Teach them things. It doesn’t have to be formal, but from birth, I’ve gone around the house with our girls on a colour hunt, named body parts while we were sitting together, etc.
- Read lots. You can read to your babies almost from day one. You get to spend time with them and you’re expanding their vocabulary.
- Perhaps most importantly, don’t talk to them like they are stupid. Use real words and thorough explanations. Encourage asking questions about the world and looking up answers when you have none.
I suppose there is no formula, but I really feel like these things have worked for us!
There is also something about the late talkers.
(This is not about my children; just interesting.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_syndrome
http://kelleyward.hubpages.com/hub/Children-Who-Talk-Late
http://www.amazon.com/The-Einstein-Syndrome-Bright-Children/dp/046508141X
Smart Children Who Talk Late
Einstein Syndrome is a term Thomas Sowell used to describe exceptionally bright people who experience a delay in development of speech. The name is derived from physicist Albert Einstein, the author of the theory of relativity and the father of modern physics, whose speech was delayed till age five.
Commonalities:[1]
Delayed speech development
Usually boys
Highly educated parents
Musically gifted (families)
Puzzle solving abilities
Lagging social development
The main thesis of the book is that late talkers are often inaccurately categorized as having an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and that a small subset of late talkers are actually highly intelligent children with common characteristics concentrated in music and/or memory and/or math and/or the sciences. It is difficult if not impossible to accurately assess the cognitive skills of a child who is nonverbal or minimally verbal if the testing is verbally weighted, which it typically is. The book also addresses children with strong personalities resisting testing and scoring well below their capabilities. The author’s own son who grew up to become a programmer, was falsely thought of as retarded because of his talking despite evidence of excellent memory and no dramatic impairment in daily functioning. The book details a series of high achieving scientists and musicians all of whom spoke late and displayed “autistic like” features (long attention span at young age, strong will, ability to play alone, delayed language/social skills) which are not rarely exhibited by those of exceptional intellect.
In my case there is clearly no formula, because my twins are exposed to exactly the same environment and their language development is completely different.
The girl was an extremely early talker. The first time she said “mamá” clearly, extending her arms towards me was at 6 months 1 day. And they were premature, so if we correct for that, it would be less than 5 1/2 months. From that moment, her vocabulary increased exponentially. At 12 months she was joining 3 words in a sentence. Now (18 months) she makes complex sentences using nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. And she tells me the English name for many things if I ask her to (thanks Little Reader!).
However, the boy started saying some simple words at 9 months, but his progression has been much more slower and linear. Now he says around 70 words, but no sentences. His pronountiation is far from being clear and no English except for “bubble”. lol
I would just hug you if I could! :yes:
You just can’t imagine how just this paragraph brought a final relief to me about my oldest!
He’s just like it is described here. I, not the others, had the same question: is he autistic or just his unique way of being brilliant ? He started to talk Romanian clearly, I mean communicating, making dialogues, only since autumn 2012 (aged 4!, though started to talk at 1 year and 10 months), and more since december 2012. He’s very good with music, singing, learning and playing piano, very good with rhythm. I mean I see him in the description above.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for this message and telling us about the book!
Andrea
While I really think it’s child dependent, there are a number of things that could help, like reading to the child as much as possible, and talking them and interacting all the time.
There is a very interesting comment by Glenn Stock on the article about Smart Late Talkers, http://kelleyward.hubpages.com/hub/Children-Who-Talk-Late:
“Kelly, I was a late talker. My mother read to me a lot and interacted with me, just as you did with your two sons. My sister, who is seven years older, tells me that I actually did speak, but that I just had my own language. And my sister was the only one who understood it. I found your Hub really interesting for this personal reason. Thanks for sharing.”
The bolding is mine cause it says EXACTLY how my son is! He has his own language and has talked like that for years. Some relatives of mine are sometimes pissed off and say he says gibberish. But I always looked at it like his own language and a feature, not a problem. That’s why I am irritated when people are superficial and judge the kid by what they don’t know about children, instead of trying to understand how the kid really is.
I read to my oldest and talked to him since he was born. My view has always been to talk to the kid, to show him what he sees. Sometimes I felt silly, but always talked to him about everything and anything and anywhere, mainly when alone with him.
I am very curios to see how my boys will get along. When they play, they both talk to each other and have fun, though the oldest is still learning to speak, the youngest is still baby talking (and he is or going to be an early talker and early reader, I’m sure, I have proof of that).
Note: 99% of the things listed for a smart late talker description are reflected in my oldest. He is just like Kelley says in her article. And she is a mom of 2 smart late talkers.
I have an early talker (compared to normal milestone charts anyway). At nearly 17months she says about 400 words. I have also only recently discovered that she can finish the ends of sentences in books.
I must say I don’t think we did anything in particular to encourage this. In fact, I’ve only just discovered the world of EL a month ago.
We did do what my husband calls “saying what you are doing” e.g. “I’m putting you in your high chair now…” etc. And named everything that was pointed at.
However she is only just starting to join words together into 2 and 3 word phrases. So I wonder whether it is just a great memory that has allowed her to learn so many words, rather than any special ability linguistically (if that makes sense)