My grandson was speaking full sentences by the time he was two. The kids never had a TV in the house, so he was read to, talked to, and mom stayed at home with him.
You can’t say because your child spoke early that it was his wonderful environment. Children who speak late often come from just as good an environment. My children were born into a wonderfully rich verbal loving environment, and one was speaking at 9 months and another one was BARELY speaking at 2.5, and only with help of a competent speech therapist. Different kids, different abilities.
Some great mom or dad might be reading this, slightly concerned about his toddler, who isn’t talking as much as the books say, and fear that it’s the parents’ fault, that they did not do something enough. It’s mostly NOT that. Brains develop at their own pace. My barely-speaking at 3 son has caught up so much.
It’s true, though, that the brain has important windows for learning speech, and it’s important that one gets an evaluation soon, if a parent notices a delay. A pediatrician can help you get started.
Sometimes kids just have speech problems.
I have identical twin girls and neither of them talked until after they were 3. We found out that one of them has a brain injury (they were both high risk for a brain injury), but the other one doesn’t.
The one without a brain injury is 13 now. Before Christmas she was a lead in a school play. After the play, she said “I think I got over my speech problems.” She has. She’s also very smart.
The one with a brain injury still has speech problems, but most people just think she has some sort of foreign accent. Her reading is a little slow, and she is not a great writer, but overall she’s great.
I believe you have pinned down one of several prime contributions to America’s dysfunctional learning process and failure to educate. I have noticed in several families were high TV, lax parenting and pop-culture norms are applied the children are socially, mentally and educationally lacking. Especially, where the children are diagnosed with some malady such as ADHD, Autism and get this one “Youthful Tendency Disorder” (YTD) and/or medicated. In many of these families, regimentation, supervision and discipline are seemingly to be in short supply. However, in two cases, one of hyperactivity the other a form of mild Autism, I noticed when interacting with their parents, they were not sure of what was being said or why certain behavior occurred at certain times. After listening to the children and watching them interact, I told the parents that they were emulating and speaking almost exactly like cartoon or child TV characters. The parents turned off the TVs, CDs and computer games…what a battle that was from what I was told; the improvements manifested shortly thereafter. In another case, of a moderate dysfunction, the child was diagnosed as having Autistic Characteristics. Shortly after, father relocated for employment, and was staying with a 72 year old aunt who lived on a small ranch where she raised five boys. After about 45 days this supposedly Autistic child was able to stay on task, speak reasonably well, could formulate whole sentences and was not acting-out. This improvement was attributed to no more than several hours a week of TV as a family event, no computer games or cartoons, plus had chores and had to play outside. The last I heard the child is making progress at a reasonable pace. I believe America’s crisis has more to do with fantasy entertainment, conveniences, laziness and inability to have a realistic/commonsense approach as a national mindset, direction and goals.
That’s great. My son’s not two yet, and he can say some simple sentences “Hi Daddy” and “Whatchoo doin’?”.
He does watch some TV—well, DVDs mostly. But I’m starting to see the logic in having no TV in the house at all.