18 Month Old Whose Speech Has Stagnated or Slowed?

Hey S.. I have a lot of physical, occupational, and speech therapists in my family. My aunt, who is a speech therapist, says that nurses are always saying a bunch of bullcrap just to get money from you.
I urge you to give your daughter time..Help her with talking. Speech therapy is a little traumatizing (well it was, for me. I got a therapist when I was one and a half and she was British. I'm American.)

And besides, a red flag should be what the nurse told you: who really has time to sit there and count how many words your daughter says?

Give her time. And should nothing improve, then do something about it.

Don't worry about it. Babies this age learn words and then they move on to learning new ones and don't go back and repeat the old ones for a long time. It doesn't mean she's forgotten. And also, 6 months is an eternity for her to learn 50 words. No reason to push it, just let her go at her own pace.

18 months is the period where children are very venerable to regression. Be very careful to look away from what may be a regression into autism or a mild spectrum of it. Read any mothers story and it will start with a loss of words. It could be nothing of the sort, but if you are not knowledgable you will miss it. Early intervention and treatment for recovery (www.generationrescue.com) is critical. Recovery is very possible, so rule it out, but don't refuse to look - even if it seems far fetched.
My hope is that she is just cycling through her words and learning new ones and will come back. J.

The only thing I can think of is ear infections. My now almost 20 month old was beginning to talk in Sept (13 mos) and in October she completely stopped. Coincidentally, I thought, she had her first ear infection. She was sick off and on in the fall with various stuff but no other ear inf until January when she suddenly had four in a row. We took her to an ENT who confirmed that she needed ear tubes and that she was hearing as though she was under water and that was why she wasn't talking. Well, three weeks ago she had the surgery (easy and very minor!). The very next morning she woke up and said Cat, Patch (her stuffed animal), toes & dog. Now, she's up to about 15-20 words and will repeat pretty much anything we say. Bottom line, she just wasn't hearing well - only due to the ear infections. She passed her original hearing tests but the ENT test showed some hearing loss that should resolve now that the tubes are in. Our ENT is Dr. Deborah Burton. She did a fabulous job both with surgery and explaining every detail of the problem and the surgery.

I'll be praying for you and your sweet girl!

Totally normal. My son would say a new word for a few days to a week and then it just disappeared, never to be heard again. He ped and I talked about it at his 18 month check up and she said he wasn't talking as much as he should but she wasn't worried about it yet either till he got closer to 2. Well, by 2yrs, the boy was just about talking full sentences at a very understand rate! The Nurse did give you good advice about making her work for something with her words. When you are at the store with her, talk to her about the foods you are buying, planing for dinner, talk about the color of the veggies, the numbers on the isle markers, etc.

Good luck!
S.

Listen to the nurse,,,, in the meantime put headphones on your child with music playing and see how she responds listening to the music, try both ears first then one ear at a time. you will be able to tell by the look on her face if she is hearing well in both ears, before getting a ENT Dr. involved at this point and time.

My youngest went through the exact same thing when he was about 18 months old. Before that, he actually said a few sentences. Suddenly, it seemed like his speech reverted back. It turned out that he was just concentrating more on new-found skills (climbing up things, jumping off things, etc), and didn't care so much to talk. We actually started looking into speech therapy when he reached his second birthday and still was barely talking. We decided to hold off a few more months, and we're glad we did. He just turned three, and now we can't get him to stop talking long enough for us to answer his constant questions. Chances are, your little one will do the same thing. Good luck!

My son used to do that. He'd suddenly drop words from his vocab. on a regular basis. But, I would eventually bring them back in, so he wasn't really losing them. Give you child a little time. You'll probably see the same thing.

S.,
Please don't try to worry yourself to death. Believe me I was in your shoes. My son is approaching 2 in May. When he was 18 months he didn't say anything but jabber. He still jabbers alot now but he is talking alot more since we switched daycares and put him around more children his own age. My child does not rush to do anything, so trying to force him to say things did not work for me. You know the old saying, you can catch more flies with honey. We just try to narrate things that we are doing. As long as your son understands what you say, and can follow simple directions hes probably fine.Work on getting him to follow commands. Good luck

honestly my daughter didn't say much anyone could understand until she was 2 yrs old. that's totally normal.

It sounds like your daughter is on schedule, she should be naming familiar objects and parts of her body(such as eyes, nose, mouth).
P. S

Is this your first child? I use to give everyting to my baby and he did not have to do much for me to meet his needs It will be nice if you can let her try to talk what she needs and if you can afford have her on a day care for a day or two a week so she is around others kids and need to talk

Hi S., I went thru the same thing with my son. He was only saying about 12 words consistantly at 18 mo. They suggested speech evaluation. I took him and they told me he had apraxia. I freaked out. I took him to speech therapy which did absolutely no good so I stopped going. I started reading more and letting him watch age appropriate videos. He is 2 yr 4 mo now and his speech has picked up enormously, still only 1 word at a time, but he can say his colors and tell you what he wants. Most other kids his age are starting sentences so I still worry. All the advice you receive will be confusing but do what your gut tells you. Most of what I have heard suggests wait until they are 3. By then, they should be talking fairly well. My biggest advice is to enjoy your time with your child and not push too hard. Just deal with it when the time comes. We all want whats best for our kids and want them to be smart, but we'll love them no matter what.

This does happen to some kids, but I did have a passing thought. Did this happen at about the same time as vaccinations? (This happened to a friend of mine, but hers was vaccine damaged.) There is probably nothing to worry about, but just thought I'd mention it for you to watch the signs.

Probably normal...but you can always check out if your local school district can test your child with a speech therapist--at no cost to you.

Also check out 'Parents As Teachers' website to see if they are at your local schools. They are trained to make sure your child hits all of her milestones in development.