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Behaviour/development

How well does your 2 and a half year old speak?

28 replies

ghosty · 13/07/2006 10:23

Just wondering really.
DS was speaking full sentences and we were having proper conversations by 2 and a bit (I have video footage to prove it ) but DD is taking her time. I am trying not to compare but DS is all I have to go on and I was told he was pretty advanced on the speech side of things for his age.
Bit of background: DD was recently referred to a paediatrician because at her 2 year check (which I only got round to doing at 2 years 4 months) the nurse noticed her fontanelle was still open and quite wide. The GP measured her head and reckoned it was too big (off the scale) so we were referred.
Anyway, paed doesn't seem concerned about her head - she is a large child (98th + centile for height, weight so she is in proportion) and her head isn't obviously large. She took her time for mobile milestones but was still within the desired age range (bumshuffled at 11 months, walked at 15mths, decided she could crawl at 13 months but preferred the bumshuffle). He took x rays of her head and hands and feet to be sure (and since then the radiologist's report has come back with no concerns)
But he was concerned about her speech. She is having a hearing test on Monday (but I am certain she isn't deaf) and will take it from there. He was talking about speech therapy.
Anyway, although I am pretty sure her development is fine (she is bubbly and chatty - although only DS and I can understand her , very on the ball, full of beans, active, co-ordinated etc motor skills seem fine to me etc) I do think her speech is not great.

So - how well does your 2.5 year old speak?

Any answers gratefully received

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tortoiseshell · 13/07/2006 10:31

Ds1 - at 2 and a half (and a first child) - we thought his speech was fantastic. Looking back at videos, it's really hard to understand him. Very much single words, or if a sentence would be something like 'me jump trampoline', or 'me thirsty, me drink'. A few milestones I remember - he learnt to say 'Daddy' (instead of Da) at 2, 'Thomas' instead of Dodo at 2.5.

Dd on the other hand at 2 and a half is utterly clear, fluent, speaks in perfect English - she's nearly 3 now, but at 2.5 was saying things like 'I clambered up on the chair, but it was too high and I fell off again and sadly hurt my knee'. Which when compared to 'me drink' just shows how different they can be.

I do wonder whether ds1 had/has a bit of glue ear actually - his ears are incredibly waxy, and he has failed a couple of hearing tests, which he passed on 2nd goes. His speech is fine now, but when he speaks fast it does become a bit more indistinct, whereas dd is beautifully clear. (I don't think her speech is typical of a 2.5 year old btw - everyone who meets her says how good her speech is, so I wouldn't use her as a benchmark! It's just an interesting comparison with ds1, when apart from the obvious presence of an older sibling they've had pretty similar levels of stimulation etc. Interestingly, dd made no sounds at all until she started to talk (apart from crying), and I was convinced she was deaf. But then she bypassed babbling altogether and spoke, with very few baby words.)

Sorry that's so long!

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ghosty · 13/07/2006 10:34

Thanks tortoiseshell ... DS was pretty much like your DD at 2.5 but although I can understand the gist of what she is getting at I do have to translate for most people (except people who know her well).

There are loads of sentences there but just not in English

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alexsmum · 13/07/2006 10:41

ds1 was speaking very clearly at 2.6.we have video of him at 2.3 saying 'come on daddy let's go' and it is clear as anything.
ds1 is much less clear.actually that's not true.his speech is clear he's just less fluent.he almost has a robotic sound to his voice.every word is enunciated very correctly.ie ' no.i.am.not.' iyswim.
dh has a cousin who is a salt and she reckons his speech is fine and that he is trying to make sure that he says the words correctly and the fluency will improve as he gets more confident with the content iyswim.

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alexsmum · 13/07/2006 10:43

also i do still have to ask him again sometimes .for example the other day he was asking for a digger and getting very frustrated with me, when i tried to give him the digger.turns out he wanted 'sticker'

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noonar · 13/07/2006 10:45

both my dds have very advanced speech- full sentences by 2, and clear, too. am not posting to boast, put to point out that the normal range is huge! Their 2 cousins, both girls, also perfectly normal were'slower', but things soon level out, in most cases. in my exp, you often get 21/2 yr olds speaking at the same 'level' as some 2yr olds or even some 31/2 yr olds.i bet your dd is ahead of the game in other areas. they're all different. dd1 for eg,slow to potty train. my freinds dd1, on the other hand has few words but could play for england!!

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CaptainFlameSparrow · 13/07/2006 10:52

DD has always been a bit slower than others with her speech - not many words and those she did have were only understood by those close to her... I was worrying, but suddenly decided that worrying wouldn't fix anything.

At 3 she is still behind a lot of others her age - she is chattering a lot and getting clearer by the day, but still nowhere near as clear as other 3 year olds.

I try to look at her interaction with the rest of her world, her hearing is fine I am sure, she seems to be intelligent enough - I think she is just devoloping different brain areas ahead of the speech part iyswim?

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Mercy · 13/07/2006 10:54

Ghosty, we also have video footage of dd at 2.5, her speech was very clear with good vocabulary. Her speech was always commented on by other people - and still is.

ds is now 2.5 and in comparison, his speech is indistinct and his vocab. limited. He speaks in three word sentences a fair amount but there are still a lot of single words, pointing and grunting. He does get very frustrated when I don't understand what he's trying to say.

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ghosty · 13/07/2006 11:00

Alexsmum, we had a similar thing the other day ... DD was standing at the cupboard pointing up shouting, "Basket, basket!" or it sounded like basket ... more like 'Barstet'. I kept saying, "There is no basket up there, what basket!"
She was beside herself getting really upset and crying and screaming at me. So I took her off, sat her on my knee on the sofa to calm her down and she held up her finger where she had a tiny paper cut, "Basket mummy, ma ouchie ma dinder"
Now, DS would have said, "I have hurt my finger, can I have a plaster please!" but how was I to know a 'Basket' was a bloody 'plaster'?????

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Nemo1977 · 13/07/2006 11:04

DS is 2.9yrs and doesnt speak as well as his peers. I have always said he talks like a teletubbie because it is like half the words he is trying to say are missing. He only started talking at just turning 2 and he does have a large vocab if you can decifier it. I understand a lot of what he says because I am with him 24/7 but other people dont. PIL have even said they havent had him to stay overnight because they wouldnt understand what he was saying.

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ghosty · 13/07/2006 11:06

Thank you Mercy - I am not hugely worried, just was wondering how everyone else's 2 year old was doing .... it is helpful to hear these stories

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ghosty · 13/07/2006 11:07

And you Nemo ... bout your PILs though ... that is pants .... My FIL is hopeless too ...

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Nemo1977 · 13/07/2006 11:09

ghosty they are not being horrible just worried about him getting upset as he can be very hard to understand. At home he will get most things he wants so frustration is less. As others said though they tend to be advanced in other ways..DS is physically very advanced and capable of doing things that most other 2yr olds would find difficult.

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CaptainFlameSparrow · 13/07/2006 11:10

Now that is my DD! It didn't help for ages when "guck" was one of her few words and it was stuck and duck - my mum got sooo confused.

Now she has "miss" for kiss and miss, and when she says "I miss you" she gets all stroppy with the reply of "I missed you too" rather than leaning in for a kiss.

Her clearest sentence has to be "NOT FUNNY!!!" though when people are laughing at her

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CaptainFlameSparrow · 13/07/2006 11:11

Sorry - my reply was to the plaster...

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ghosty · 13/07/2006 11:14

LOL CaptainFS
Nemo ... sorry didn't mean to have a go at your PILs ... Just a bit bitter about mine you understand

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gladbag · 13/07/2006 11:14

My ds (who is 2 1/2) speaks fairly clearly, and in sentences, but makes a lot of grammatical mistakes, which I assume is age appropriate. He still refers to himself by his name rather than using 'I' or 'my' ( let's say he's called Sam, he'll say "Sam really like go park now, Mummy", and "Mummy get Sam's train out please"), and he refers to himself as 'you' rather than 'me' (eg "Come on mummy, get apple juice drink for you please," meaning for himself).

He does use new words all the time now, but I often struggle to understand him at first , like yesterday he kept asking for things and tacking "foridges" on the end...not a clue, til I realised he was saying "for ages" as in "Sam not see Nemo fish for ages" - he wanted to watch it

He wasn't saying anything much at about 18 months, and then only a few single words, but his speech has really taken off since he was 2. Is that the sort of thing you mean?

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Clary · 13/07/2006 11:24

Ghosty ds2 is 3.4 now but when he started at his pre-school last Sept (he was then 2.6) his teacher told DH she could only really distinguish mummy and daddy one first getting to know him IYSWIM.
He said quite a bit more than that but it wasn?t very clear. Dd at 2.5 was very clear, ds1 didn?t say very much at all IIRC (it was a while ago lol).
DS2 fwiw is much clearer now tho some sounds still tricky (someone is domeone, ?swing? the other day was ?ding? so I thought he was saying ?thing?, and ?f? is tricky which is a shame as it?s the first letter of his name....)
That?s a great post from tortoiseshell. What a difference between her 2. I recall DS1 (who had some SALT for pronunciation issues) saying black as ?bwa? - he was about 4 or 5 - while DD, then 2-3yo, was sitting there saying ?black? perfectly.
lol at digger for sticker/basket for plaster, I so know where y're coming from.
A pal has a son who is 3 in Sept and he might say "Buzz Lightyear is at my house" but it would come out as "Bu Li i a my hou" but I can get the gist and he's getting much much better all the time. Yr dd sounds fine tbh.

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ghosty · 13/07/2006 11:27

He sounds like a cutie gladbag . And his speech sounds fab ... much better than DD.
DS used to get me and you mixed up too ... He would say, "Carry you please mummy" holding his arms up to be carried. My niece did the same and SIL and I guessed it must have been because they heard, "Shall I carry you?" ...
The name thing is not something I have seen that much .... DD is very clear on 'MINE' but she rather than 'me' she says 'ma' as in 'my'. Her clearest sentence to date has been "Ma Woody tat ma did bite my" which translates as "Woody, my cat, bit me."
Other sentences are, "Ma firsty, ma want ma dink"
"Where ma bag gown?", "Where Daddy gown?"
She says gown for gone, won't say off - insists on OPP "Soos OPP peas" ('Shoes off please')
"Den" = again
But mostly we get by with "Blah blah blah Woody blah blah bag blah is funny" from which we may make out that Woody (the cat) has climbed into a shopping bag and DD finds that amusing.

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Bozza · 13/07/2006 11:36

DD is 2.2. She has a pretty large vocabulary with the most regularly used words quite clear but others not so good. So there are lots of words everybody can understand but also quite a few that it takes me to decipher. She has just started saying "I do it" instead of "my do it". She is starting to put more words together but not speaking in complete sentences. She is ahead of where DS was but he did have glue ear/grommets and probably caught up by age 3.

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CaptainFlameSparrow · 13/07/2006 11:40

We have "I bursty" rather than firsty.

The best thing ever was giving DS an unusual name... she says it fairly well, but people always say "What's your brother called then?" She tells them, they look at me inquisitively and then when I repeat it they look like "oh, I did hear it right"

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blueshoes · 13/07/2006 11:48

Methinks dd 2.10 has been slow-ish on the speech side. At her 2 year check, the HV said to monitor the situation. Now she is speaking in 4-5 word sentences, pronunciation still unclear but clearly progressing in leaps and bounds. I can sense that she really wants to gear up on the speech side because she listens when I verbalise.

Eg I ask her what happened at nursery and she tries to tell me. Then I put in simple words what happened (the carers would have given me a run down at the pick-up). And I can see she is listening and storing it up.

Speech is one of the most variable between children developmentally. Some seem to pick it up from telly and others (like my dd) need to work at it. But so long as there is progress at whatever pace, I am not inclined to worry at this age.

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arfishymeau · 13/07/2006 12:25

My DD didn't speak at all, and by 2.4 I was really concerned about it. Suddenly at 2.5 she started to speak in full sentences, and now at 3.5 she has a much wider vocabulary than a lot of her friends.

All of the advice that I had up until then said that if you are sure she can hear, and she's pointing at what she wants, then you are ok. Most people also pointed out that Einstein didn't talk until he was 5.

I'm sure your DD is absolutely fine - although it is difficult when everybody else's is talking. It makes for a hard extra year when you have to try to work out what they want.

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singersgirl · 13/07/2006 12:33

My DSs were both good talkers, but DS1 was much less distinct and grammatically correct than DS2, who was rather like Tortoiseshell's DD.

We have a friend with an early talking, articulate first son, and another of 2.5 who still wasn't really talking. No one has been concerned about him since his receptive language and general development is all fine.

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kitegirl · 13/07/2006 12:44

God, paediatricians (community paediatrician was it?) and their development checks... I am not going to start really I am not... These speech targets are such a load of rubbish at this age. The range at 2.5 is HUGE and child development is not linear - they can come on leaps and bounds in just a space of a month. My ds (2.5) has only just started to speak, HV referred to a paed at 2 yr check up (like you that took place at 2.2) and she was fussing and tutting because he was not putting two words together at that time. Long story but they told me he was probably autistic, I told them to bugger off - like your dd, ds is a lovely, chatty and bubbly little boy, he can name lots of animals and although his speech is very unclear, it is improving all the time and I can understand him just fine! He now says things like 'my bike' and shouts 'no' to everything! . And, he is ahead of most of his peers in motor skills (proud mummy moment - he was pedalling his trike this morning !). Don't worry, what I learned about my escapades with paediatricians was that you know your child best!

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Clary · 13/07/2006 12:58

please don't quote the Einstein thing, he was probably autistic.
Ghosty I agree with blueshoes that progress is the important thing. How was she 6mo ago? Is she a) clearer b)saying more?

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