When Did Your Little Boy Start to Talk?

My second child did not talk until he was almost 3. His older brother did ALL the talking.They are 22 mths apart. Nic would mumble something and Layne would tell me what he wanted. But boy when he started it was full sentences. No baby words, no short cuts, full on speech.
He is still much quieter than his brother and they are 22 and 20 now. And they still have some sort of secret language and finish each others sentences.
Good luck!!
Blessings!
D.

I've had the same situation as Catherine. My son and my cousin's daughter are 8 days apart in age. Just before their second birthdays, she was asking "Mama can I have watermelon? I can get it by myself." My son looked at me and said "wawamellow."

So, boys do take longer. My son did have a language explosion right after age 2...

There's a joke in our family about this. My daughter is the same age as her (boy) cousin, within a few weeks. When they were turning 2, we took them to the beach. A boat was floating out in the bay.

My daughter: "Look! It's a big red boat! Ooh! It makes noise! That noise hurts my ears - mommy, did you hear that? Did you see the red boat? I like boats! Can we go on the boat?"
Boy cousin: "BOOOOOOAT!"

It cracked us up. To this day, the kids still joke with each other about it. For the record, they're both 9 now and neither one of them can shut up, ever. :)

My son didn't say a word at 2 1/2. He was almost three when he "started" talking. My closest friend's son was over three when he started talking. Boys in my big family range from one year to 3 1/2 years for talking, so I never worried about it because his comprehension was excellent and I could tell nothing was "wrong". My eloquent son is now 4, and speaks like a little poet. Not only does he talk, but he uses very sophisticated phrases and plays on words.

2.5 is when my son actually began to TALK

My older son had words around 10 months and his first sentence at 13 months. The younger one said nothing but "poppa" until he was almost 3! But he is now 17 and a gifted writer. Go figure!

my son ran a good three months behind his sister in terms of linguistic development.

My oldest was holding conversations with adults before he was 2. We were first time parents and he was tiny so people often thought he was even younger. As a result, we failed to process that his language development was...extraordinary.

Our middle son had some language development challenges (won't get into them here, but we knew what they were), so he spoke a great deal but was unintelligible until he had speech therapy. Now he talks All The Time! He still can't make the "th" sound, but he's young enough for that to be normal.

Our youngest son babbled and enjoyed making sounds but didn't say anything we could decipher until he was about 2 (recently) when he suddenly piped up with "want mil(k) peeeeese (please)." His favorite word is "rabbit" and apparently he needs one (he'll walk around saying "need rabbit" (I don't know what he's talking about but he knows what a rabbit is).

As long as your son is responsive and babbling, he's probably within a window of appropriate language development. My sons' development was so varied and they are all doing fine now.

Best of luck at your well baby...

The standards of language are the same for both boys and girls. That is why so many boys are considered "delayed". In your case though, it sounds like your daughter was very advanced. Your son sounds fine. I mean, he just turned 1 about 2 months ago, right?

I have two sons. One was talking not long after his first birthday, if not before. The other son barely said anything until he was about 3 years old. Both are smart!

My son didnt start talking till he was 3 1/2 and that was only because I put him in a getting ready for school program, It wasnt till then that he really started putting his words togethere and makeing little sentences.Otherwise I was so worried at one point I thought he might have been deaf and had him tested.But nope he was fine he just took his sweet time to talk.Now my son is in the 5th grade and made Honor Roll and just received two academic medals for English and Math. So your kids could just be taking there sweet time.

My boys were the early talkers... both had a few word before a year... animals sounds, Mama, Dada, ball, up, etc. By 14-15 months both were talking pretty good (like 50-75 things they would say - putting two words together).

My daughter on the other hand, at 15 months had about 4 things she said. :) Mama, ball, Dada, and maybe one more.

Now she's 3 and she does.not.shut.up! :)

My son, who is now almost 5, was very slow to talk while my daughter who is 3.5 years older was talking in full sentences very early. We, along with his preschool teachers and doctor, were concerned, but we decided to wait until he was 2 to see how he was developing. Right at the point when we were talking about having him evaluated for speech he started talking up a storm. Now he is NEVER quiet, and we joke about how we were so concerned about his speech. Each child develops differently, and boys can develop more slowly than girls.

Both my older boys were 'late' talkers compared to their girl counterparts. My oldest didn't say much at all until about 18 months and even then still called me Mimi instead of mommy. At about two he was talking up a storm! Well before three we counted up the number of words he said in a sentence and it was like 12 :D Now that he is 4 getting him to draw breath and listen is the real challenge! Of course he did get a huge vocab at an early age and now we are having to work on pronunciation bc he didn't have time to worry about how he spoke because he has always had SO much to say, even though he got off to a somewhat slow start. With my second, I have a good friend who's daughter is about a month younger than him and was talking a good bit before him. Like at 14 or 15 months like you mention with your daughter. My middle guy is now 2 and talking a lot and he is so funny :D He didn't really get into talking much at all until almost two. He babbled a lot and could clearly understand what you said to him, but he didn't talk. BUT his pronunciation is already very good and he can count and all kinds of stuff. He is the kid who wants to wait, watch and then do it when he has his ducks in a row. So in my personal experience boys do talk later than girls. Now most people I know who have both say boys are a good bit more active than girls. I wouldn't know as I have three bouncing boys, but I think that boys being so physically out there just do motor stuff first and then work on communication. Just a personal theory from observation, could be total hogwash! But they do say that for every three words a woman says a man says one so it would make sense that we would get started sooner :D You little man sounds totally normal to me :D

My son is exactly the same age and is pretty close to what you are describing. My daughter (who is now 11) was definitely saying more words by this age. My son says "dada" and "mama" and I am pretty sure I heard him say "doggie" several times. He shakes his head no, and can definitely understand simple things (bathtime, ride in the car, time to eat, etc) because he goes right to the bathroom, or the garage, or the kitchen when I say what we are doing. Don't worry about it too much, all kids are different. I think boys just generally talk later than girls. I also think, the younger children tend to take longer to talk than the oldest child because you work with them one on one more since you don't have any other children to tend to.

first every kid is different. My son and daughter both started talking around 12-13 months old and were fully talking in sentences by 15 or 16 months old.

My son started with first words at 15 mos, but didn't really use words with meaning until between 18-24. Huge ramp up during that point.

My DD is currently 18mos. She has about 10 words, but she doesn't use them to communicate. She still prefers to point and grunt at stuff, rather than use her words (other than Mama/Dada). We just had our 18mos checkup, and the ped said she wasn't really concerend, as long as I noticed a steady ramp up over the next few months.

Updated

My son started with first words at 15 mos, but didn't really use words with meaning until between 18-24. Huge ramp up during that point.

My DD is currently 18mos. She has about 10 words, but she doesn't use them to communicate. She still prefers to point and grunt at stuff, rather than use her words (other than Mama/Dada). We just had our 18mos checkup, and the ped said she wasn't really concerend, as long as I noticed a steady ramp up over the next few months.

EVERY child is different. My first born didn't start talking until she was 2 1/2 yrs old. My second didn't actively talk until closer to age 4, and the third started talking sooner than my first born. Talk to the ped over your concerns but rest assured, every child will talk on their own timetable.

I had an occupational therapist tell me just last week that caucasion boys are the late talkers and as long as our LO was doing more than the babbling we have now by 18 months, we were in good shape. Any later than 18 months forming "words" and she wants some speech therapy (we have some other things going on), but in general, they don't worry about those little white boys until much later. I think your little guy is probably fine. Sounds a lot like ours (he'll be 14 months next week).

My kids were similar in development. My son babbled a lot, but it wasn't until he was around the 26 months that we could really understand him clearly. After that his vocabulary took off. He was learning a ton of new words every single day and now at the age of 4 he has a very large vocabulary. We did a sign language class at around 6-9 months just for fun, took music classes, watched shows like Dora and Blue's Clues, read books and talked all the time to him. Like you, I was never really worried about him. He got the hang of it in his own time. My daughter on the other hand was saying ma-ma and da-da at 4 months! I think girls are just generally more advanced in the verbal skills than boys are. However, in gross motor development, my son pretty much skipped the crawling phase (crawled for only a few weeks) and was walking just days before his 1st birthday. My daughter didn't start crawling until a month after her birthday and was taking her first steps around 15 months. Kids all learn different skills in their own way at their own time, but most kids pretty much get the hang of major milestones within a reasonable amount of time. Your kids' development sounds right on target to me.
HTH,
A.

I couldnt have an actual conversation with my son until he was 3. :(

A friend of mine's little boy just turned 2 a few days before Christmas. We talk daily and I urged her to talk to the pediatrician because she was also concerned with his speaking. He wasn't saying any real words except "hot" and "bye." She has since had him evaluated by a speech pathologist. They have "speech" once a week. His speech is delayed, but just in the last two months I can hear a huge difference in his language.....and not necessarily because of the therapist. I wouldn't worry at all, just yet. Keep a running track of what he can say and how he says it. Also, pay attention to how he responds to commands and things you tell him. This will help you determine if there really is a delay and if you want to seek services later. My guess is that he will start talking before he turns 2 and you will laugh about this later. Best wishes, mama. :)

My son said his first word at almost 13 months. Has not stopped since then. At 18 months when his pediatrician asked us how many words he had -we no idea, more than we could keep track of.