My sons (twins) didn't really start talking until 24.5 months and then by 25.5 months were very obviously ahead of the game with extremely good vocabulary. We came to understand later that they had, and still have, articulation issues. One of them still has difficulty hearing the difference between vowel sounds. They also had some gross motor issues, so the verbal and motor skills not only masked their giftedness, but we thought they might actually be slow. There were other signs of intelligence before the speech came on board, but we didn't look closely at it. They are HG, not PG overall. Both of them had some very high scores on their testing, but also some very low ones, so there may be something else going on. We have not yet had an opportunity to explore this.
Everyone on the family has been slow with speech for at least a few generations back, with both my family and their father's. We have a 22 month old DD now, and she is 'average' with speech, aside from some very early incidents of accidentally clear speech. Again, her articulation is a problem, but I am far more aware of of the nature of the difficulty now than I was before. This *would* mask that she is bright, if I hadn't been through this before. Even so, I don't know anything more than that she is sharp, with an excellant memory and a neat sense of humor.
