Is there any big secret for ealry talkers?

[mybabyian]

I find this subject very interesting and have tried to read up on it as much as I can without spending too much money on books!  I would love to read William Fowler's book but I can't afford it.

There is a chapter in Nuture Shock that is pretty interesting.  I got the book on my kindle through my library.  I am guessing it is the publisher who decides if they want libraries to be able to lend their books this way so I would think that other libraries that do digital lending may have it also.  I love my kindle so if you have one too you might check it out.

It seems one of the biggest things you can do besides talking a lot yourself is listening and responding.  I repeat a lot of what my son says.  He likes it and he will often then repeat me.  So we sometimes repeat the same thing back and forth to each other 10 times.  I think it must be forming all kinds of language connections in his brain to have that much practice.  I sometimes repeat it back but in a different way so he can learn different ways of saying the same thing.  Or I expand what he says a little bit.

My son will say something like, "Molly is sad because she wants to go for a walk."
Me: "Yes, Molly is sad because she wants to go outside, but she has to stay inside."
Ian: "Molly is sad because she wants to go outside and has to stay inside."
Me: "That's right, Molly is sad because she wants to go for a walk, but she has to wait.  We are taking Lucy outside first."

etc.

I also think it does not matter if they can do sign language or speak; it is all practice using language.  Even when using two languages practice with one language makes them more competent in the other.  The book The Bilingual Edge says this and that learning two languages does not delay speech.  I am not sure if that is true but seems to be the case for us.  Of course to be fluent in two languages you need to practice both, but it seems when my son learns something in Spanish he then easily learns to say the same thing in English and vice versa.

As for baby talk, it is important not to confuse baby talk with motherese.  Motherese is speaking clearly, slowly, and with varied inflection.  This actually helps them to understand and to learn language.  I think one thing that helped my son a lot was the fact that Spanish is my second language so I naturally speak it a lot more slowly and carefully.  I think that has helped him to hear more clearly what I am saying.  Unfortunately now he is getting so good that I am starting to feel inadequate to teach him, but I will keep trying.  It is good practice for me too! 

I always wonder if I have another baby how will he develop speech.  My son is an early talker, but so was his dad.  My MIL said that when he started preschool at 2 he said that he didn't like it because the other kids sounded stupid.    I can see the way my MIL is with my son and she does do all the things recommended so that doesn't help the nature vs. nuture debate. 

Anyway, I think that different kids will always develop differently, but that doesn't mean you can't help them a long.

[learnersinbloom]

My twins (now 3) had very high comprehension even at 12 months, but said only 2-5 words by age 2 and never made certain sounds (like 'baba', 'dada'), so I panicked.  I gave them Baby Babble 1 & 2 DVDs to watch and all of a sudden they were saying sounds and then speaking in sentences shortly after that.  I have no idea if it was the result of the DVDs or they were just ready.  Maybe the 'problem' was that I was speaking to them in full sentences, adult language (which they understood), but they just needed to practice basic sounds (which is what the Baby Babble DVDs do).  I'm trying them out on my 12 month old boy now, and he still isn't saying much but has a wider range of sounds than his sisters had at his age.  I think each child just develops language different, though.

[Frukc]

I can tell you a story about my first kid. Since her 7 to 20 months I was working at home and we had babysitter. From 7 to 11 months she come just few hours a day but later she was here 9 hours per day, 4 days a week. Her task was to distract my girl from me; we had 2-room flat and I was working at the computer. So, babysitter was nicely talking to my kid all the time  

My girl spoke earlier and better than any other kid I know (I know that there are earlier talkers but I do not know them personally). She had just 8 abbreviated words at 12 months. The explosion of vocabulary was at 14 months. I found in my records that she said "mummy sleeping" at 17 months. at 26 months, she spoke in sentences with correct grammar (I do not know the terms; she had all the little words, past and future).

at 17 months she had also the understanding about "if you will do A, you will get B" (if you will let me dress yourself, you will get milk).

my second kid is not speaking that well. although he has EL since his birth.

google "dialogic reading", it really helps us.

[Frukc]

I also believe that early talking is connected with kids temper. my girl newer played alone since she was 2. she was very unhappy without interacting. she always wanted someone talking to her. she is also a highly sensitive child.

my son likes to play alone. when he finds something interesting, he just "switches off" his ear for 30 minutes.

I also find this paper very useful
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/124/1/342.full.pdf+html 

[lois1]

I talk(ed) a lot to my little boy, 2 next week, but I felt he was fairly slow at grasping speech although he could sign several hundred words by 18mths. He is beyond regular milestones but I think I compare him to children on this forum  We are in an unusual situation where we are far from family & friends. The local friends/ people wouldn't dream of talking to a baby & we definitely get odd looks in the shop when we count out the items as they go on the conveyer belt.

He could say very few words at 18 months prior to our trip to Canada. We were with family & lots of people were down on the floor with him & interacting, not just my husband & I. I was amazed at how many spoken words he came home with after just a month. He kind of plateaued, then at 21 months we had lots of visitors including my parents & sisters who came for a fortnight, again they were down at his level making eye contact & he was "included" in all the conversations (he's the most interesting one out of all of us anyway, haha). Since then we have several new words every day with no coaxing, it really does all just seem to come flooding out.

He may have figured it out anyway at 21 mths but I found it interesting how it seemed to coincide with a variety of people talking to him rather than just mummy.

The only thing I notice now is that as he gets more fluent he sometimes doesn't take the time to enunciate properly since he has so much to say... mama, became mummE, which now can be u-E-u-E-u-E. If I ask him what my name is he'll say Mummy just fine, & perhaps just a little bit sheepishly    .

The other day, we were going through the alphabet - usually  e/ e is for  egg, but spontaneously he came out with "ellow"... he doesn't say yellow very well yet... although can say yoyo perfectly:-) I was pretty impressed how he made that connection, even if it was incorrect. He's not reading (& I do say & spell yellow with a 'y'  ) I'm going on the "he's phonetically aware" bandwagon

[mybabyian]

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?   

[lois1]

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. 

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.

[PokerDad]

Thanks for the response. Please update us more on his insights when you finish the book. By the way, what is the book's title? Is it 'The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late'?

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)

[Korrale4kq]

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.

[nee1]

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.

[seastar]

. 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

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

[Korrale4kq]

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.

[Korrale4kq]

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.

[teachingmykids]

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.

[mario]

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.

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