Research shows that 70-80% of late talkers will catch up to their peers on their own.  However, this means that 20-30% of later talkers will not catch up to their peers without intervention.  Unfortunately, there’s no clear way to know which group a child will fall in to. 

The following guidelines can help you determine if your child’s vocabulary is appropriate for his or her age. If your child has not yet reached these milestones, he or she should be seen by a speech-language pathologist:

• 18 month olds should use least 20 words, including different types of words, such as nouns (“baby”, “cookie”), verbs (“eat”, “go”), prepositions (“up”, “down”), adjectives (“hot”, “sleepy”), and social words (“hi”, “bye”).
• 24 month olds should use at least 100 words and combine 2 words together. These word combinations should be generated by the child, and not be combinations that are “memorized chunks” of language, such as “thank you”, “bye bye”, “all gone”, or “What’s that?”. Examples of true word combinations would be “doggie gone”, “eat cookie”, or “dirty hands”.

As mentioned, it can be difficult to predict which children will not catch up to their peers. However, a list of risk factors has been identified, which suggest that a child is more likely to have continuing language difficulties without intervention. These include:

• quiet as an infant; little babbling
• a history of ear infections
• limited number of consonant sounds (e.g., p, b, m, t, d, n, y, k, g, etc.)
• does not link pretend ideas and actions together while playing
• does not imitate (copy) words
• uses mostly nouns (names of people, places, things), and few verbs (action words)
• difficulty playing with peers (social skills)
• a family history of communication delay, learning or academic difficulties
• a mild comprehension (understanding) delay for his or her age
• uses few gestures to communicate

If a toddler has a limited vocabulary for his age and any of the above risk factors, we recommend consulting a speech-language pathologist.  Call us at 1-888-623-6363.  All of our programs and services are FREE.

(Source: Hanen.org)