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I have a lot of questions.... My dd19 does not articulate very clearly. She is putting two, three and four words together but wow it is so hard to understand her that I think she is frustrated. Here she knows the alphabet and can spell a few words etc. but her sentence structure is not that advanced.... I think if I could understand her better it would develop better. She actually will act things out so I can understand what she is trying to say then I try and memorize the sounds that she is putting together that make the words. For example when she wanted to go down a slide she used her arms up high and then brought them down and then went into a full squat. We signed with her and she put two signs together when she was 9mos asking for "more milk" and "more daddy" Dad travels a bit. Now she talks more than signs, but wow its not that clear and I feel like I am learning another language. I have to remember what these different combinations mean. She has had some hypotonia issues and was in PT for a while but I quit that because their attitude to her was as though she was delayed and they actually labeled her developmentally delayed in the beginning. Anyways again any thoughts this way would be wonderful. Thank-you.

DD's early speech was also very hard to understand, and it was the source of much frustration. But we got through it. Actually, she is still hard to understand at times (and she is 4 now), though her speech is now far above the norm for her age. I think her fine motor skills (which are pretty normal) have held her back.

Do you think your DD's articulation skills are below average for her age?

All my kids have spoken unclearly at different points, completely separate from their very large vocabularies and complex sentence structure and almost perfectly appopriate use of adverbs (which, as a writer, I love!). None of them had any issues with the physicality of speaking either. The just didn't say all the sounds clearly.

My oldest DS didn't use consonants much, which meant that bat sounded like hat sounded like cat. Luckily, we never had a ton of trouble understanding him because of context. Dear boy never really got frustrated if we didn't understand, either -- he would just show us or get whatever he needed for himself. Anyway, the thing that ended up helping him speak clearly was when we started focusing on phonics. In particular he liked things like "Between the Lions" on t.v. and "Hop on Pop." [BTW: We didn't do it for reading, but specifically because we thought it would help with pronunciation. He already happened to be interested in BTL and we already owned and read HOP. We just decided to use those as a jumping-off point.] We talked about how important all the sounds were in a word and that if you changed just one of the sounds it changed the whole meaning of the word. It took a little time, and it was never anything but casual and occasional, but within a month or two he really had an explosion of sorts and he started talking much more clearly. In 1st grade he had to work on saying Ls, but that cleared up quickly when he focused on it.

DD spoke the clearest, but still at 8 says Rs more like Ws. She likes to say that she sounds British. We point it out to her whenever it makes it hard to understand her, but in this case she truly can't make it completely clear. I kinda think it will come with time, but if she's 10 and still doing it we may have to figure something out.

Younger DS6 has the muddiest language. For him it's not that he can't say the words properly (although Rs are tricky for him, too), it's that he talks and reads quickly and is lazy about saying the sounds clearly. But ask him to say anything the correct way when you model it and he can. I'm not sure what exactly it is going to take to move the way he *can* say words to the way he consistently *does* say words, but right now we tend to practice when he's reading to me. I try not to correct his pronunciation too often since I want him to enjoy reading as much as he already does, but there are times when I'll point out the correct pronunciation. The other thing we do is, after a reading session, I'll have him repeat words to me that he's said unclearly while he was reading to me. It seems to help him be more aware of pronunciation.

Sorry I don't have any good answers. 19 months is still very young, though, and I don't think that any speech pathologist in the world would expect your DD to speak clearly. At that age, red flags are pretty much only raised when a child is not speaking at all or when there is a physical issue like sucking problems. Of course, that doesn't mean that both you and she can't get frustrated!

Oh, one other thing that worked when I couldn't understand something my kids were saying: ask them if they can say it in a different way. With a larger vocabulary they were often able to say it in a different way, and then when I understood, I was able to figure out what they had been trying to say. In that case, I always made a point to validate what they had been trying to tell me by saying something like, "Ah, you were trying to tell me. . . ."

2 of my kids had speech therapy for yrs. They are both PG but one scored -0- on articulation assessment at age 3.5. He scored very high on the tests requiring understanding. We tested hearing. There were lots of ear troubles. His fine tuned articulation didn't come till age 6, so I'd say 19 months--you're ok. We assessed another kid earlier and he's still in therapy (age 8) but he's also getting orthodontic assistance because of teeth/tongue issue.

Hi thanks for the responses.... I do not think that she is behind regarding age and after our stint with pt I would be reluctant to involve anyone at this point.... but it seems funny to me when she seems advanced in other ways. So it is nice to hear that other people had indistinct articualtion and their kids were also advanced. People refer to "large vocabularies" but I posted a question asking for what that may mean and so far no one has responded. At 16 months little one had over 100 words some sigend some spoken and at 18 months was over 300 spoken and we had lost count. Would that constitute a large vocabulary? I am thinking of the LOG by Ruf.

flower, I didn't respond about what constitutes a large vocabulary at 18 months since I'm not sure what a pediatrician or a speech pathologist would look for, but I can assure you without a shadow of a doubt that 100 words at 16 months (even if some are signed and not spoken) and over 300 spoken words at 18 months definitely fits the definition of a large vocabulary! And, I'm virtually certain that for a word to "count" it doesn't have to be said perfectly clearly -- just consistently or clearly used to mean a particular thing. HTH!

My 12 year old son who has hypotonia was similar at 19 months. He had a big vocabulary and he also knew the alphabet. One of his favorite books from the time he was 12 months old until he was almost two was a Dr. Seuss alphabet book. I still have pages of it memorized because he wanted me to read it to him all the time, but I don't remember exactly when he first spelled a word. I know at 2 he was spelling several easy words like boy and girl. He read his first easy reader that he hadn't seen before at about 2 1/2 and he could also name words that were spelled out for him so I knew he wasn't just sight reading, yet he was also considered "developmentally delayed" because his weak muscles made it more difficult for him to develop motor skills.

It was sometimes difficult for other people to understand what he was saying when he was 19 months old, but he also acted out things when he spoke so I could usually understand what he was saying. At that age "chocolate milk" sounded more like "gochen meo" but other words he said were easier for other people to understand. I had once worked with a woman with cerebral palsy so I had practice learning to understand her "language" which she called Gailic because her name was Gail. Her intelligence and sense of humor were not affected by her disability so I wondered for a while if my son had mild cerebral palsy, but when he started walking at 18 1/2 months I thought he was okay and the doctors didn't say anything about any delays at his checkups, but they always noticed his vocabulary because he was not shy about talking to them.

Although my son had developmental delays in his motor skills, he didn't get any kind of therapy, but by age 4 he had learned to slow down when he tried to speak and the only letter he still had trouble pronouncing was L. He got teased a little about this so he practiced pronouncing that letter on his own. By 4 1/2, when he joined a children's community musical theater group, he could finally pronounce L's but his musical theater teacher still had to remind him to slow down and enunciate, especially if he was excited.

He turned 12 this month and he has an incredible vocabulary and the gift of gab just like his dad. People assume that he is older because he is tall and is more articulate than a lot of adults, including me. He doesn't have to be reminded to enunciate any more. He just got the part of the mayor in Seussical and he is taller than the girl who will be playing his wife and she is six years older. People assume that he is several years older than he is which is a good thing considering his friends have always been several years older.

Just came from DS 2nd year check up, doctor asked if he was saying 50 words. So if 50 words at at 2 is the minimum threshold they are looking for I think 300 words at that age more than qualifies for a large vocabulary By the way DS5 and DS2 both have articulation issues

Thank-you for your response...How is the hypotonia? Did he grow out of it? How does/did sports go for him? My little one started walking around 13 1/2 months but she had pt from about 5 months on. However, the pt was really hard for me because they pushed her and I did not like that. the final session was when they tried really hard to make her go down a slide. I had been working with her on slides outside of therapy and was not having any trouble with it and they almost ruined it for her because they pushed and she was scared. So I continue to work with her. Her upper body strength seems to be the most affected so we set up games where she has to crawl or do things to put weight on the front but it is not pushed and if she does not want to then thats fine. The weather has warmed here and we are going out alot and playing at various play grounds and that helps alot! I think her poor articulation hinders her in doing more complex sentence structures because I just can not understand her. I have worked with the Deaf and hard of hearing for a long time and am use to poor articulation. I just don't have the memory though to remember all the different nuances etc. gtg she wants juice...thanks again!

I read an article a while ago on Google Scholar and have not been able to find it that said that 18 months old vocabs. range from 10 0r 20 to 350 words and I wondered if that included gifted or not. It seems some people on this board have kids that would have been well above 350 at 18 months. I wish I could find that article again.... anyways thank you for the information.