Signs of a Speech Delay at 18 months

Hey, so we're going to talk about signs of speech delay at 18 months. And we did a episode, actually a video last week talking about what you should do when your child is not talking at 18 months old. So that is exactly it. If your child is at 18 months, I'll just tell you in like, five seconds, is that if your child is not speaking at 18 months, and that's like, in a lot of countries and cultures, the language milestone for the latest time to use single words. So if your child isn't using single words yet at 18 months, there is a risk of speech delay. Okay. And there isn't really much other than that because we can talk about other things right after, but that's the biggest thing. So if your child is at 18 months not using words yet, let's define what's words. So words are speech sounds co coming out of your child's mouth that references something in the real world. So it could be that he can say, want for everything or give, or like he says, I don't know, mama, for everything. That's still kind of counted as a word because he's using. Whether it's right or wrong, it doesn't matter because he's using a speech sound to reference something in the world. Right? So how many words are there? It doesn't really matter at 18 months old, I truly think so. Talk about signs, and it's very easy to fear monger. Like, it's very hard, very easy for someone to say, hey, look out for these signs. Right? Look out for, like, if they're not looking at you, they're not responding to her name, whatever. Obviously these are signs. This is something you should be, like, too scared about at 18 months old. All you got to do for now is to think about how to get him or her ready for them to start speaking. Right. And ready. As the video from the previous week we've been talking about, there are prelinguistic skills that all children are supposed to acquire first, to learn first before they get to a point where they're ready to talk. So some of them are. For instance, are they able to match objects? Do they know object permanence? These are all jargons, so I don't want to dig into it. The biggest sign I feel like is that from my profession. I'm a speech therapist. I've been seeing clients from 18 months all the way to, like, 10 plus had adult autistic persons as well coming to ask for my services. I think that, you know, like, at 18 months, what's the biggest sign, obviously is the lack of the use of words. The lack of using gestures is a huge one. Baby signing is a really good way to teach children to learn, adapt to communicate nonverbally. Right. It doesn't need to be always about talking. Like gesturing is also a good way for children to communicate. Right. The second thing is also, does your child actually have an intention to talk to you? So we're going into the territory of autism as well. But having an intention to talk also helps. If you don't have a want and a need to talk to people, your language isn't going to excel. Right. If, if you don't like reading books, you don't like watching videos, don't like whatever you, you're not going to be able to speak and read better than someone who actually likes doing those things. So it's the same with children. If you look at a child, do they have the intention to talk to you and communicate with you? The more they want, the more they will practice. The more they practice, the less likely they will become a delayed individual. And the last thing to look at is play skills. Does your child have what we call age appropriate play skills? What's appropriate? 18 months. There's a lot of play skills at 18 months old. If your child can like stack up blocks, you know, like, can push things, can like vroom, vroom with a car, that's already more than enough, I would say can press a button and then something pops out. At 18 months old, to be very honest, it's not even hitting the point where we start looking at like play skills, such as cause effect stuff, meaning pressing a button, something happens, blowing a bubble, some a bubble comes out like we're not even hitting that yet. So we want to observe if your child likes to play, likes to interact with you, and that those are the signs. If your child has those signs, what do you do? Well, obviously, as we were talking about last week is not to rush to a speech therapist immediately because of, you can watch that video. We were talking about how at 18 months old, it's too far too early for a child to be assessed and to be serviced and to have therapy. But what you can do is to think about how to teach your child some gestures to get their communication needs and wants like, at least addressed. Secondly is to teach and play with your child a lot. And how to play with your child is a very long topic. Attention span of 18 months old is very, very low. I think if you have a bunch of toys that you can put on the floor and just cycle through them and push some buttons, something pops out. Doing some what we call mother re is like how a mother would talk to her child, going like gasping and waiting and observing what your child likes. And there's a whole series of videos that if you search on YouTube you'll probably find it by the Hanan program. So it's H A N E N if I'm not mistaken. But you can also read the book called It Takes Two to Talk. Those I think are a little more appropriate. But at the same time, at 18 months old, there's only a handful of things that you can do. All right? So don't worry about it too much. Enjoy your time with your kid, learn how to play with your kid, how to get their attention without shouting, screaming or whatever. Instead, use toys, use activities. And a lot of the times for 18 months old, what works the best is you as the. As a toy. Like you can throw them around, you can spin them around, you can teach them to, to go on a swing, whatever. So I think that's pretty much it for now. I don't think there's too much worry. You shouldn't have too much worry about speech delay at 18 months. Usually we start thinking and observing more at 2 years old. So the age long phrase by doctors wait and see at this point is rather correct. So that's all for now. Thank you so much. And if you haven't, Please go to www.agentsofspeech.com course and you can watch some free lessons there about how to interact with a kid and teach your child at home. Alright, so that's it for now and I'll see you next week. Bye bye.