How articulate is/was your 2-year-old's speech?
acia
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I was at the GP today for a visit (DD was along bc I SAH) and when it was time to go DD says, "Cankoo dot-da" (translated: "Thank you, doctor"). The doctor then made a comment about keeping an eye on her speech because she was difficult to understand. The comment was just in passing, and obviously he's not a pedi or a speech specialist, but now it has me thinking....
DD is super verbal, in the sense that she has SO much to say, and is pretty much constantly engaging anyone who will listen in some kind of conversation. I can understand about 98% of what she says - though sometimes when she says something new I've got no clue what she's trying to say, but she always clarifies by using actions, pointing, or relating it to something that she can talk about clearly. (She's going to be one helluva charades player one day lol!)
An example of her typical speech would be something like this - tonight she wanted to go upstairs so she says "Hah go up-sairs an jump on mummy daddy bed" (which means "let's go upstairs and jump on mummy and daddy's bed"). Some words are obvious and perfectly clear, while others are way off (eg. "Hah" for "lets").
When we're out and about, I do find myself translating for her, because the rest of the population can probably only understand about half of what she says....
How easy was/is your 2-year-old to understand? Do you still have to "translate" for LO, or are they speaking independently at this age? Should I be concerned and maybe take her in to see a specialist?
Re: How articulate is/was your 2-year-old's speech?
This is how DS speaks too.
Our doc said, if you (the parent) understand your LO at least 70% of the time thats not a problem. I told our doc I understand DS 90% of the time, its on a rare occassion I have to ask him to repeat what he is saying, and show me because "mommy doesn't understand."
My mother who was a speech pathologist, said as long as he isn't talking this way at 4-5yo, don't stress out. its normal.
I *think* our speech therapist said she wanted Peyton to be atleast 80% intelligible by strangers, and 90% by us.
But, I could be wrong.
When she says the word wrong, I would make sure you repeat it, correctly. Ex: It's "LET'S" jump on the bed, Let's, can you say, "Let's?"
Same here.
Go Phils!!
Yeah, I do this - but if it's a word she actually has trouble with, she can't even repeat it properly. Even when I ask her to repeat "Let's" she says "Sles" which may be why she makes up a word that she has an easier time with.... It's bizarre to me because she can say the word "cappuccino" as clearly as any adult, but can't even say "let's"!
Most words, even longer ones, she can say pretty clearly when she's repeating, but it's almost as though she gets lazy in her independent speech and just sort of mumbles or slurs them out (I joke that she sounds drunk sometimes lol). Hopefully it's just a maturity thing that she'll learn eventually....
I wouldn't worry. She's on the young side of 2. The older my DD gets the more clear her speech becomes. Words that she used to say incorrectly eventually get corrected over time without me specifically asking her to pronounce them correctly. ie: she would say cici for Daisy (on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse) and I would say yes, that's Daisy.
I was just at a friend's house yesterday, one who doesn't have kids, and I asked her how much of his speech she can understand. She said around 60%. I understand around 90%. I'm not worried at all. There's a huge range for what's normal, some kids get really clear speech earlier than others, and it's no real indication of if they're smart or not. As long as she's speaking in a way that you can understand most of the time, she's fine!
We actually had DS's hearing tested around that age, because nobody could understand him, and the pedi and I were really concerned. Even I could only understand about half of what came out of his mouth (without the context clues of pointing/looking around), and I had to translate almost everything for other people.
Turns out his hearing was fine, he just needed a little bit longer to be able to enunciate better. Within a couple months I was understanding almost 90% of what he said, and strangers could get about 50%. Now I get almost 100% the first time, and strangers get about 90%.
The only thing I did, other than the hearing check, was to really pay attention and stress the correct pronunciation of words for him.
I translate for DS quite often but mostly because what he says is totally random. Eg he will say to a stranger in the elevator "carwash is WAY down there!" talking about the car wash at the gas station that's a few blocks away from our building. Or he'll state randomly at dinner time "elevator at train broken, fixed now!" So I say "oh, he's talking about how the elevator at the train station was shut down for repairs the other day, but now it's working again"
Stuff like that. I know what he's talking about because I remember why he's mentioning these things. But other people have no idea what he's talking about because it doesn't pertain to anything going on at the time! Otherwise he's fairly clear in the words he says but he tends to stutter at the beginning of his sentences a bit, and gets his wording mixed around a bit "I don't know what is that" instead of "I don't know what that is" He's 2 years 2 months old
This is basically my DS, too. And those are exactly the sorts of things he likes to talk about
DS is in ST (and DI too) through EI and both his therapists said that diction comes later--even in non-delayed speakers. So at this point in time, I'd say your DD is just fine.
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