Why isn't my 2 year old talking
Why isn’t my two year old talking?
and other questions you might google
Hi, I’m Suzanne I’m a Speech and Language Therapist with over 15 years experience supporting children under 5 develop their communication skills.
What “should” they be doing?
I know that milestones are open for interpretation and they can cause anxiety so I always mention them with caution. Speech and Language UK has some helpful guides to what to expect when with communication: Ages and stages – Speech and Language UK: Changing young lives
Lets think about an example child called Ben.
Ben is following all our expected milestones and has been babbling and starting to understand every day words from around 9 months. Around his first birthday he says his first word “dada” when dad comes in the door.
Over the next 12 months his vocabulary will grow rapidly and by the time he is celebrating his second birthday he has a good word bank ready to start joining two words together. This might sound like “more juice” “no mummy” “want Peppa”.
What is a late talker?
Either you were reading that above and going- great my little one sounds similar to that. Or you were reading it thinking- oh no my two year old isn’t doing that. If you are in the first group great, I hope I’ve reassured you.
But, if you are in the second group then I’d love to help you and your little one who we might describe as a “late talker”. A late talker is a child who is meeting lots of their other milestones on time- things like sitting up, walking. They might be really good at understanding words but maybe they only use a few words, maybe they don’t use them very often or maybe you haven’t yet heard any words from them.
The good news is you’ve identified it and you are ready to help them.
Why are they a late talker?
Being honest here, we don’t always know the reason behind it. Communication is such a complex skill to learn and there are so many stages and processes to talking that the difficulty can occur at lots of steps along the way.
Chances are if you google “my 2 year old isn’t talking” somewhere in there it will say they may be autistic. This is one reason but not the only reason.
Another way of learning to talk
When I was in uni studying to be an SLT (Speech and Language Therapist) many moons ago the way Ben is learning language was the only way we were taught that language is learned. Now we know this isn’t quite accurate and some children learn language in different way to this.
Let’s think about
Jack, Jack loves songs and nursery rhymes. He did babble but maybe it was more tuneful than Ben, sometimes sounding like a song. Instead of starting with single words Jack stared talking by using phrases he had heard from those around him, songs or TV programmes he likes. Jack starts by repeating these phrases, later he uses them with meaning. For example when he realises it’s time to go he might say “let’s go” just like he heard Peppa saying on TV.
Have a listen to your child- can you hear songs or things from tv repeated in chunks?
One way isn’t better than the other it just helps to know how your child is learning language.
What can you do to help?
As lovely as all this information might be you probably want to know what to do right?
Firstly- please put the guilt down. I’ve worked with so many parents over the years who are amazing parents yet their child still has a difficulty learning language, it’s a difficulty you are very unlikely to have caused. The chances are you are doing lots of great things and you are helping them learn lots of other skills. This skill: communicating, is something they find hard and need extra support with.
Here are my top 3 tips
Communication is about connection so remember to have fun!
spend lots of time playing together, figure out the things you child really loves and what activities or toys give you the most connection together
Model language- words and phrases
like I said above some children will learn language in words and then build them together to make phrases, others will learn phrases. So talk about what is going on around you in short phrases- time to go, let’s get our shoes on, the cow says moooo
Create opportunities for communication
Your child is probably very well loved and has their needs met easily, especially when communication is hard you are likely to be very tuned into their every noise and movement. Knowing what they need often before they need it. This is lovely but, in order to communicate children need to have something to communicate about.
Can you offer a choice
Do something silly and see how they respond
Pause before you do something fun to give them a chance to communicate they want more
Ready, steady, go games work really well for this, add a pause in before the go to see if they can communicate the “go” somehow- a wiggle of their body, a noise or looking at you
What can a Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) do and when should I get support from one?
If your child isn’t meeting their milestones or maybe they did initially but now you are not seeing any progress, or maybe they did have some words but now they seem to have vanished the chances are they might need some extra help.
If they needed glasses you would take them to the optician so it makes sense to get support from an SLT if they need help with talking. But, what I know is that this isn’t always the case. Often parents are told to “wait and see” or “he will get there in his own time” and then parents are left to try and figure it out themselves. I’m not a fan of this!
We know that early intervention has the best outcomes, there are sooooo many studies on this yet sometimes people feel hesitant to reach out for help.
An SLT is going to work with you to support your little one, at this age it’s not about sitting at a table to repeating words from a flash card. It’s about playing and having fun, looking at opportunities to create communication and supporting you to add more of these into your day. Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes will notice a communication attempt that you might have missed ( because that’s what we are trained to look for).
Remember:
Trust your parent gut when it tells you to reach out for help
Be assertive is someone tells you to wait and see- “thanks for your advice but I want to help him now”
Find an SLT to support you! SLTs work in the NHS and independent practice. google “help with talking” and it will take you to the ASLTIP website which is the association of SLTs in Independent practice. You will be able to put in some details e.g. postcode and age of your child and find someone local who would love to help you
I can support you! get in touch and we can get a time to chat. I cover in person appointments in North Wales and online across the rest of the UK, I’d love to support you
