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Toddlers: 24 Months+
Please tell me about your 2.5 year old.
I am a special education teacher so I will admit that I am paranoid!!!
My son is 2 years 5 months. He has a big vocabulary and speaks in short phrases. My concern is that he can only answer very simple questions such as "What's this?" of "Who is that?" or "Do you want ____?"
He can not answer more advanced types of questions such as "What's your name?" "What's your sister's name?" "Where is your dad?" "What movie did you watch at Grandma's?" "What did we do at the park?"
I thought he would be a little more conversational by 2.5. The other 2.5 years olds I know (not many) speak in full sentences and you can ask them all kinds of questions. Maybe they are just advanced???
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Re: Please tell me about your 2.5 year old.
I'm not sure what is developmentally appropriate and my DD is pretty verbally advanced, but she can answer all of the above questions. HOWEVER, there are plenty of times she chooses not to. She is motivated to answer when she wants to tell us about something but rarely does on command or when I am trying to "work with her". I attribute it to regular 2 year old stubborness. Also, if someone asks her a question like "what color is this?" or "what's your name?" just to see if she knows, she refuses to answer it. If you are somewhere and he meets another child and you say "tell them your name!" is he able to do so? What if you say "tell daddy about the park", or "tell me about that movie you watched at grandma's."?? I know that for a long time and even still my DD had a lot of difficulty with "Why?" and if I want to ask her a why question I try to rephrase it or not use that word. Maybe he simply is still working out the meaning of the question as opposed to not being able to find the answer. Does that make sense?
Anyway, I think that being able to answer those questions that you said he CAN and having short phrases and a good vocabulary is a completely appropriate place for a 2.5 year old to be. I'll bet he'll suprise you soon with another verbal explosion!
My daughter is a bit younger than your son, but there are definitely some questions she has trouble with. Mostly they're the "why" questions, though, now that I think about it. She can certainly answer what her name is, or what her friends name is, or what we did during the day.
Do you model to her how to answer the questions? I know I had to explicitly "teach" DD how to respond to the "what's your name?" question a few months ago (i.e. "You say, 'My name is Finnley' when someone asks what your name is."), and we even practiced with her dolls. Same with the "How old are you?" question she'd always get asked when out and about. And now she'll not only respond to the question when asked by others, she even goes up to other kids and says, "What your name?" or asks me "What little girl name?" or "What lady name?" if she wants to know. It's obviously not grammatically correct, but she gets the point across.
Despite this, even though I know she's capable of answering these questions, sometimes she just doesn't. Whether it's that she's feeling shy, isn't comfortable in the situation, isn't feeling particularly chatty, has something better to do, or is just asserting her independence, she just chooses not to respond. She still needs prompting, encouragement, and modelling. Part of it is just practice, and part of it just takes time. Do you think it's that your son genuinely doesn't know how to respond to the questions, or is it that he just doesn't want to (or is shy or something like that)? Does he seem confused when you ask him these questions? If so, I'd just do lots of modelling, even explicitly with dolls or other people, or tell him how to respond and have him repeat the appropriate response after you.
I think language acquisition is an ongoing and long process, and every kid progresses at their own pace. If your son is making progress (i.e. improving on whatever skills he has, learning new things, not regressing in any major way, etc.), then I wouldn't worry AT ALL, and I'd try not to compare him to other kids.
Hmmm. Trying to remember DD at 2.5 exactly. She's been very verbal and has great comprehension, but I think those "what did you do..." questions are hard for toddlers. I don't think they always remember the way we do. It took a long time before we actually could ask her what she had for lunch and get a straight answer. For the longest time she just said, "cheese!" every time--no matter what she really had. Now, she will say, "I had ham, and cheese, and bread, and some apples! and Miss Amanda gave me chocolate milk! It was good!" But even now, I don't necessarily get a true and accurate response to questions about the day. Sometimes I do, but other days there's some imagination thrown in.
I'm voting totally normal. Just give it another month or two and I bet you start to get better answers.
My DD has always been fairly average on language skills and she started learning that stuff right before 2.5 but like someone else said I had to teach her how to respond. "You say my name is ___" or I'd ask her yes/no questions to get to the answer like "Is your name Bob?" no.. "What is it?" "Did you watch Dora at Grandmas?" No.."What did you watch?" Blank stare. "Then did you watch Diego" No... till I got the correct response.
My DD is 2 years and 4 months.
I wrote her actual responses to the questions you listed.
What's your name? Name Julia.
What's my name? (she doesn't have a sister) Name mommy.
Where's your dad? Daddy go to work.
What did we do at the park? Go down the slide.
So she can answer but they aren't grammatically perfect sentences. With the name question we modeled the answer a lot. We practiced asking what her stuffed toys names were and we practiced saying her name. The same with what did you do questions. e.g. We went to the pumpkin patch, while we did stuff we narrated it. So now if you ask her what she did she can tell you. We also ask what did ____ do? When we read stories or watch a show. She's pretty good at answering no matter who asks her.
I think your son is doing fine and I'm sure you're probably doing all of the things I mentioned already. I would say that DD's ability to answer these types of questions only happened within the last month or two. Just keep exposing him to the questions and narrating. He'll be telling you all about his day soon!
I have heard there is a huge difference in vocabulary between boys and girls, and I have seen it myself. My DD is two months shy of 3, and she has been speaking in full sentences since she was 18 months old. She can sit you down and tell you everything she did today, complete with pausing to reflect on things and changing her answer to fit her mood, and she asks YOU how your day was, how you feel about things, etc. I am not sure if it's advanced, or just very verbally and in tune with her surroundings.
My 4 year old nephew on the other hand still doesn't speak that much, and can't really pronounce or enunciate words that my DD can.
But every child is different, as you know. I don't think you can tell if there is a developmental problem just because a 2.5 year old isn't speaking as much as other kids. Sorry, not much advice, but I wouldn't really be worried about it.
As a special ed teacher, you must have access to a ton of resources. Do you have a co-worker or friend who could actually evaluate him for you? They would be able to tell you for sure what's on track and what isn't and my hunch is, it would be a VERY reassuring experience for you
Our daycare sent home a check list of "milestones" our 24-36 month old should be reaching and we read it, laughed our butts off and threw it away because it was all stuff he had already done before he turned two. If I recall, one of the main red flags for concern was if your 2 year old could NOT speak in short 2-3 word sentences. It seems like "short phrases" are the bench mark here.
FYI, with my now "verbally advanced" child, when he was first learning to speak, there was actually some real concern from our pediatrician that he might be verbally delayed. So, even if your son is a little behind now (and I'm not saying he is) he may well catch up and surpass his peers in the future.
DS is not quite 2.5 years old (he's about 2 yrs 2 months). He can answer some questions but like some other PPs, only when he feels like it haha. He asks us "How are you doing today?" ("how you doin' today DADEEE?) all the time right now, and we say "I'm doing fine, how are you doing today?" He doesn't know how to respond. He usually answers the question with some random statement about the room he's in or what he did eg: "lights are on!" or "walked up the big hill!" He's still learning.
He does answer his name or what colour something is etc. when asked, usually one word answers. And sometimes if you ask him a really short simple question he answers with this long drawn out very enthusiastic sentence that may or may not make any sense haha.
We had DS evaluated, and he was fine. Here's what he can do.
I think your son is fine, but I'm not an expert. It was a big relief to me to have DS evaluated by early intervention.
We had DS evaluated, and he was fine. Here's what he can do.
I think your son is fine, but I'm not an expert. It was a big relief to me to have DS evaluated by early intervention.
Our 2.5 yo can answer all those questions, and seems to talk more like how the ladies with little girls are describing. He talks all the time, constantly narrating every single thing he's doing. We talk with him constantly, too. Even when watching Sesame Street, I'll ask him little things like "What's Elmo doing?" before he had the words for it I'd follow up with "Is Elmo dancing?" and he'd be able to respond "Yes!", now he can actually respond with "Elmo's dancing".
I guess our little guy is somewhat advanced, because at his last check-up with a new dr., we were told that by the time he's 3yo, he should be able to say 3-4 word sentences. If you're still pretty concerned, it might be worth making a dr. appt just to double check and ease your mind.
Married April 1st 2017
DS #1: May 2009
DS #2: Jan 2012