Talking late

According to the development reviews we’ve done so far, communication is the area where Talia is most delayed. Until very recently, her spoken language involved some fantastic babble but almost no actual words. At 12 months corrected she occasionally used “gat” to mean cat, but not consistently, and that was it. She was late to point and even now (15 months corrected) does not nod or shake her head.

Read my lips... no more pavlova...

We have received a referral to see a speech pathologist but are still waiting for our first appointment. In the mean time we continue to talk, sing, read and (to a lesser extent) use sign language with her. We are not particularly concerned, in fact we think it’s likely that she’ll be a complete chatterbox once she does finally get the hang of talking. But there’s no doubt that having a baby who’s a late talker can be a source of anxiety.

In the last month I’m relieved to say we have seen a huge change and improvement in both her spoken vocabulary and the number of words she understands even though she doesn’t try to say them herself. Her favourite spoken words are “boo” which means ball, balloon or bubbles, “woo woo” which means dog (woof woof), “dut” which means duck/swan/coot (our local park has many of them), and “gat” or “tat” which means cat, cow, elephant, giraffe, parent or any other random passing animal which is not a woo woo! She also says “shzz” for shoes/socks, a slightly different “boo” sound for book, “fuff” for flowers, “fish”, “shut” and “gak” for cake or biscuit. In the last week she has started to say “okay” in response to questions. So we are suddenly at 10 words (and more), although interestingly none of them is mum, dad or no, which are supposed to be the most common first words.

Talia’s receptive language has also grown in leaps and bounds this past month. She can find a particular toy or book, and point out all sorts of objects on the pages of books when asked. She is starting to distinguish colours and a few parts of the body, and can respond to simple questions. Even though I know it’s normal, I still find it really quite impressive that she understands so much more than she can say.

I started taking Talia to sign language classes (Signing Hands) earlier in the year, predicting that she would be slow to talk. Unfortunately I didn’t factor in that she would also be very slow to sign! She will indicate milk via sign language, but that’s been all so far. It has been an interesting experience for me to learn some Auslan, and now I have the tools to sign more if required in the future, so that (hopefully) she can communicate with us without too much frustration if she still finds speaking difficult.