I wonder sometimes about DS's expressive language. He's definitely ahead of the milestones in this area, but he has some quirks that make me think... For example, he often has trouble coming up with words. He'll use ambiguous terms like "that" or "this" and when I press him to explain what he's talking about, it's clear that the words just won't come right away (even for items I've heard him call by name repeatedly).
He also has trouble expressing himself if anyone else is talking. He'll say, "I want you to be quiet! I'm trying to talk!" And then he'll just sit there for a minute saying, "Um... uh... um..." Finally something will come out, but it takes a while to gather his thoughts.
It's really difficult to know what is simply personality or developmentally varied or a true developmental delay with expressive language when children are so young. With our ds, no one recognized any one thing as standing out as an obvious sign of an expressive language disorder, and the things that were signs of it we all (parents, preschool teachers, friends, family etc) saw as simply adorable little quirks, engineer personality (there are a lot of engineers in the family), genetics (previous generations of family members here and there who didn't talk... and to be honest... most likely had an expressive language disorder that no one recognized as such!). Even when he was struggling in school and had his first neuropsych eval the expressive language disorder was missed - hiding behind his dysgraphia. It wasn't until he was around 9 years old and finally able to tell us that he was having a hard time with certain kinds of situational communication that we realized there was more to his challenge than dysgraphia.
I am not saying that your ds has an expressive language disorder - it's really really *really* tough to separate out at his age. I just wanted to point out why I now see the importance of imaginary play, and I'd keep an eye on signs - the disinterest in imaginary play, searching for words etc - once he's in school and once he's a little older and better able to tell you himself what's going on inside, it will become (hopefully!) clearer re whether or not it's just personality or it's just a phase or it's something more.
Best wishes,
polarbear
ps - fwiw, our ds also had (still has) difficulty with directions - it's *sometimes* a sign of an LD -
It can also take a fair amount of time for him to process directions.
