Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Confused or Humorous?

DS18mo can say 20 words max.

I was talking with DS on the phone yesterday. He said Mama to me a couple of times. Then all of a sudden, he said Dada to me and laughed hysterically.

Was he confused my voice with his dad?!? I hope an 18-month-old would know the difference between his father's and mother's voices. Or was he trying to be funny?

Because of his limited vocabulary, asking him about it would be fruitless.

Was his dad with him? Maybe ds was referring to his dad?
But if not, then my vote is on being funny. I think you could "ask" him in a way. You can name things correctly and incorrectly and see what his reaction is. (Of course, if this tickles him, you might just start a trend where he does that all the time...)

I remember when dd was younger I took everything she did as equivocal (was that really a word? is she actually comprehending what that means, or is it just a loose association? etc., etc.) until the evidence was overwhelming.

Regardless of what he was doing, I can't see the downside to him laughing.

No, my husband wasn't with DS at the time. Even though DS is a smart little boy, his delayed language skills have me worried sometime. This particular episode made me wondered if he can differentiate our voices or not.

Nevertheless, laughs are always good.

My DS used to play tricks on me all the time as a baby and laughed his head off about it. Maybe he thought it was funny he called you dad. 8)

I don't think having 20 words or fewer at 18 mos. counts a language delay, no matter how smart the child is. "Walk at one, talk at two."

As Clay suggests, my kids always found incorrect naming to be a huge joke.

DeeDee

I don't think having 20 words at 18 months is a delay. Now if he had 20 words around a year and hasn't added to them then I would be concerned.

And age 2 milestone is not talking but talking in short 2 word sentences.

Not meeting the milestones "on time" is always nerve-wracking. That being said, I've known of several boys who were like that -- taking their time talking, but they were just fine. (Hey, that even reminds me of "A Wrinkle in Time" when the 3 yo went from not talking at all to sounding like an adult literally overnight. Ok, I know that's fiction.)

The delayed talking could be due to a dozen different reasons -- some benign, some not so. Do you have some other indication that something might be wrong with his hearing? Or his ability to hear pitch? I imagine, for instance, that he understands way more than he speaks. Is the mommy/daddy thing one more piece of evidence to add to an ever-growing pile, or is it an isolated insident that stood out because you're trying to figure out what's going on with your ds?

As a Speech Pathologist- I totally agree with this. At 18 mos you hope your child would have a vocabulary of 20-50 words. Remember that animal/motor sounds count as a word, and they should start to put 2 words together by 2 years old.

Dd wasn't an early talker but then it came like a flood, starting around 18 months. We didn't notice, because we have one child. But parents of her buddy, who was 3 months older were concerned about their son because when DD did start talking, it was articulate and at 21 months, she had 3 word sentences down. But nothing before 18 months. And we realized her vocabulary was about 2000 at 2. So you never know when they decide to talk.

Ren

I vote for 'joking.'