Just wondered when your early talkers started using words for a purpose.
My daughter is 8 and a half months old and she has quickly picked up that if you crawl over to people with what ever she wants and she says "ta" they will ususally give it to her as they are so surprised - or she shouts TA at them until they relinquish
She greets people with "hullo or hi" and a wave and says "ohhh" when she cuddles people as she gets such a good reaction.
She was at preschool yesterday and they were telling me she now says "boo" when she plays it -
She has started saying "loveya" to us and has been saying "Mum & Dad " for a whille now. She has even started labeling her plastic animals - with her first animal word being "tiger" which she said so many times at preschool i noticed the tigers disapeared from the room for a whille!
Bubba when she has her dollies ...
She doesn't really babble much - except when she is eating then we get some babbling and raspberries!
She also labels things and has said clearly but not regurlarly so we don't count them as words
Highchair
cuddle
Book
Rara (her caregiver is called Sarah)
Does this sound like your early talkers - or pretty standard 8 mth old development ?
I can't remember at 8mths, however my daughter was talking in sentences at 13mths and it was considered early. Also, when I look through her plunket book, the nurse wrote excellent talking and lots of words at about 10mths....
Wow, 8 months sounds pretty early to me....reminds me of a book miss 4 is reading where the baby is born being able to speak but has to pretend not to be able to so that his parents don't get freaked out!
Angie was very similar to Mother of 2 in her talking. I remember starting Playcentre at 18months or so and everyone being amazed at how well she was talking! As she is our only child it was just kinda normal to us.
My child would call to me ("mama") at 10 weeks old. She stuck with that and whispering dada repeatedly until about 6 months old, when she started labelling things. By 11 months old she was asking questions - ie, "what's that?"
Thanks for your replies - just wanted to know when other children started this she attends a play group and preschool and she is the only child to be talking - she has progressed in just the last week with even more language .. it is hard though as friends with babies the same age only one of them has just started saying mum..
This is considered early - and here's an interesting thing to watch for - Your baby will have her own words or hand signals for most familiar things - this occurs usually from about 6 months, and you can use them to encourage speech by noticing 'her word' for something, repeating it, and then replacing it with the 'english' word for it so she makes the connection. My youngest was a very early talker but a latish walker (13 months) - and as he learned to walk and run well, which took about 3 months, he stopped talking - and when he resumed, his vocab had more than doubled! This indicates that he was focussed on motor skills, but was still absorbing verbal skills while he was at it... I'd be interested to hear from others who have noticed similar things...
My ds certainly did the "own word" thing - most notably a kind of throat clearing noise which meant "rubbish" - we guessed it was derived from me saying "oh no, that's rubbish, yecchh" as he put hideous things in his mouth as a crawler. He continued to use it as he added ordinary words, so for a while we had "ecchh-bin" and "ecchh-truck". In fact we count his first sentence as something which contained no English at all: " {siren noise} [wave gesture] Aba! " which translated as "the fireman waved at me!" (Aba being a very distant approximation of his name, but one which he used consistently for a long time). He also had wild success with a 'question" word which sounded like "A-din?" which seemed to mean "What is this?". At his first creche aged 12 months he marched around pointing to everything "A-din? A-din? A-din?" - the questioning was so clear that people would get very involved in explaining everything to him...when his actual speech came in it was with a huge flood, perhaps because there had been so much input! ;-).
A was not an especially early talker, nor his sister, just early/advanced enough to be remarked upon at playgrounds, "he's a good talker" but not really out there - although their language skills are well ahead of age now - what Mum of 3 describes certainly strikes me as very early.
Oh, and the "I'm learning physical skills, so don't bug me with the other" we certainly noticed - big bursts of language after walking was sorted especially.
Our daughter also didn't walk till 13mths. I didn't worry though as I understood that at that stage, her verbal communication came first. She had been crawling well since 7 mths and I guess that walking wasn't as much of an issue as talking because she got around so well!
Son hasn't been an early talker. In fact last year we took him to speech therapy because he was so hard to understand. The speech therapist made it clear however, that part of the reason he was so hard to understand was because his language was so advanced for his age. He also didn't walk till 13mths however at the same time, his physical skills have been impressive - catching, throwing and batting well by 3 1/2. He rode around the house on a motorised 4 wheel bike at 1 1/2 without hitting anything and even standing on the seat while driving!
Definately, I can see that each child picks certain skills they feel they want to expand on, while leaving other skills seemingly untouched at times! As Lyn says, even though it appears that they may not be learning at times, I'm continually amazed at what comes out!
My daughter started talking at 6 months and then had lots of vocab every month there after. I think a lot is about tuning in as a parent. I do agree that they seem to stop progressing with their vocab when they have a big skill to master - like walking. She was talking in short sentences at 15 months and we remember hearing" look Daddy I'm all wet!" when my husband and I were bathing her and doing a hairwash! Our faces must have been a picture! Like Rebecca (above) her verbal skills seemed to come first, before a lot of the more refined motor skill development.
She is now 2 and 2 months and comes out with very complex sentences. We've found that we have to keep providing her with new books (aren't libraries great?)- often the non-fiction interest her more than the fiction ones do.
She also got very frustrated around 10-15 months (think lots of tantrums) as she couldn't make herself understood properly as she didn't have quite enough prepositions and verbs to get the message through to us. Things really got better after that point and you can't argue now with things like "Mummy come here and be a pretend stegosaurus with me"!
But things definitely got worse around the 12 month mark - before they got better!
Well, not sure if mine count, as they started using proper words at 11 months. The younger one has been speaking in sentances for so long now that I can't remember when she started (she is not yet 2)
... and I hear from everyone all the time about her 'amazing' language skills
and it certainly does stand out when shes with a group of other toddlers.
Fair to say that this is fairly unimpressive when compared to some of the stories above!
But I do find fascinating the complexity of some of the ideas she is expressing - its no wonder wee ones have tantrums when they don't have the language skills to tell us what they are thinking,
My eldest seems to have been the other extreme. She didn't really speak untill she was almost 2. Mostly used a combination of grunts and gestures to get her meaning across. She walked at 9 months, but is now slightly behind physically and ahead with verbal skills at 9 years. Seems their early skills don't always predict how they will progress.
My second child did nothing but sit and watch for the first 10 months - I started to think there was something wrong.
The youngest child I have heard stringing 3 or more words together was 12 month old. I've also heard a 10 month boy clearly using single words, which his parents hadn't picked up because they were too busy dealing with his very active physical development.
8 months is probably early. It will be fun to watch how she progresses. It is such fun to watch how they change.
He he she is now 9 and a half months was sitting in her high chair whille we were having some pop corn when she yells out "get me down"
we all just about dropped what we were eating - then this morning across the monitor came "get me up"
At this stage - you don't really do anything next! Just keep on loving your precious wee girl! Keep talking to her and stimulating her with age appropriate toys. You could also try talking to her at times in different languages - this helps to stimulate certain parts of the brain, and can potentially help make learning a different language easier for her in the future.
I found the baby einstein etc dvds excellent. But for both of mine (my eldest was an early talker - although not quite as early as yours appears to be!) I think talking to them as much as you can, explaining whats happening, what you see, what you're doing is the best thing you can do at this age.
My grandson had quite an extensive vocabulary until he was about 5-6 months old and got REALLY mobile - then he essentially stopped "talking" - but not before he had learnt very well how to engage people and - well - "manipulate" them (not necessarily in a negative way).
He is 13 months old now and rarely utters a word but, communicates very well and has never been one for "baby babble" (apart from singing along to songs).
He is far more interested in how things work physically than what they are.
Just take each moment and phase as it comes is my advice - and dont sweat it.
I was having lunch with a friend one day and cutting up some food for my kidz when my wee daughter who was barely old enough to be saying words let alone sentences piped up and said perfectly clearly, "yes, cut it in half". Language and fractions as well. My poor friends mouth dropped open she was so astonished that she needed reassurance that yes she had actually heard right.
Pre school teachers later commented on my daughters amazing verbal ability.
In contrast to most of the above, my daughter was a bit slow with her motor skills, and began talking at a similar time to most of the other kids at her preschool. The only indications that she was a little unusual were her proficiency at jigsaw puzzles and her very early smiling (although maybe I didn't notice other stuff). When she did begin to speak, however, the floodgates opened, and basic reading followed soon afterwards. A group of medical school students borrowed her for a practise paediatric assessment when she was two. They found that she was behind in some skills and ahead in others, with competencies ranging from 18 months to four years. She was and is a happy kid most of the time, so I've never worried about it!
My son seems a bit quicker with his speech, and has been making consistent sounds (which may or may not have meanings attached to them!) since 8 months or earlier. He's been much quicker than his sister with his motor skills, but not exceptional. I have a sense that he is gifted too - more so than his sister - but again, no amazingly early development!
My second daughter is now 8 months. She too started talking at 5 months and has clear speech. "mummy, daddy, cat, more, again" and her sister's name are all in regular use. She also (like her elder sister) practises under her breath - and her latest is "what's that" - well actually "what da?".
She also is slightly slower than average with her motor skills.
I always thought my first son talked well and early until my daughter was saying, "Asher, where are you?" at 9 months old. Asher is her big brother, my first born. Now I have a 4th baby and he has said "Hi" for 2 months now and last week he said "Daddy" and tonight he said, "Baby," and he is 5 1/2 months old. I didn't record exactly when he said, "Hi," because I thought I was imaging it, until he said it 4 more times during the following weeks....so....now I'm keeping track of the words. Both "Daddy" and "Baby" were repeated...."Daddy" was said when his dad was looking at him face-to-face and said, "Hi, I'm daddy." Andrew said, "Daddy." "Baby" was said tonight while I was looking at photos of my first born (he's turning 5 this week so I was looking through first year photos) and he heard me say "Baby" but did not see my face as I was holding him next to me in my left arm while sitting on the couch with my laptop on my lap.
I don't know if my son is a precocious child. He used little words like "up" and "pan" meaning he wanted to look on the top of the stove at 7 mnths. At 8 montns he said mommy and daddy with meaning. At a year he could name and remember numerous aunts uncles cousins nieces etc.
At thirteen months he said "I lay down" and did just that. From then on his speech expanded and he now talks occasionally in ten word sentences at 20 month and knows and uses hundreds of words.
He walked at 9 months and started saying "mommy or daddy" at 8 month with meaning. He is sociable and runs, skips, hops, climbes up and down stairs and tells me: "I don't like you to wash my hands"
I really enjoyed reading the posts regarding early talkers. My youngest daughter, Jamie, was talking in two-three word sentences before the age of one year. At 8 1/2 months. she called out to her father "Hey Tim!" We were both amazed because she had been calling him "Daddy," and now she picked up that I (her mother) called him "Tim." When Jamie was was 13 months old, my oldest child celebrated her birthday. We had a birthday cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to her...a couple of hours later, I put Jamie in the tub for a bath, and she suddenly looked up at me and sang the entire Happy Birthday song! After she finsished the song, I hugged and praised her, then got my husband and told him what she had just sang. Of course, Jamie would not sing it again for him, she merely smiled and said, "Daddy." so he thought I was a little nuts. A couple of days later though, we were in a restaurant nad suddenly the lights went out and a waitress came out of the kitchen holding a birthday cake and singing "Happy Birthday." Our daughter chimed in-the the amazement of our neighbors-and finsihed the song with the waitress. Her early talking continued to amaze everyone-and in some instances-perplexed friends whose children were the same age...
Flash forward to the present time. Jamie is now 14 years old. She is an average student with the exception of Spanish and math. She is also talented in gym and art, but I would have to say that she is overall average in her schoolwork. I really t hought that she was "gifted" when she was a toddler because of the early talking and singing, and even her conversation skills with adults and children-I can't tell you how many times my friends said "Jamie is 18 months old, and I can talk to her as I would another adult." (I don't mean that they were conversing about politics or world economics, but simple, every day topics).
I guess the lesson is that just because your child is an ealy talker does not necessarily mean that he/she will grow up to be "gifted" scholastically.
I find that when I mention that my daughter was speaking in sentences at 13mths, I get a lot of doubtful looks! She would have me verbally backed into a corner by 2 years of age! My son on the other hand didn't really do much talking till age 3, and then we had to get him speech therapy - mainly because of ear problems. Oddly enough, both children are very visual spatial, my daughter is slightly dyslexic - so although extremely 'on to it', she doesn't excel academically either. My son however does - I homeschool them and despite him being 2 years younger, I teach them at the same level!
I think the average age for walking is said to be 12 months, so I don't think 13 months is particularly late. Mine walked @ 15mo 14mo 17mo and 12mo.
Of the 4 only one spoke early. He spoke his first word at 8 months and was using sentences by 12 months.
Many of you seem interested in what early speech and/or motor skills mean in the long run, so hopefully my experience will help.
Motor skills, unless extremely delayed (and my kids all walked at ages that are considered within the normal range, even if some walked on the later side of normal) are meaningless in the long run. Frankly, I think I got the better deal with late walkers. The later the better. Babies under 12 months have no idea of what dangerous is and being mobile at such a young age means more work for mum.
Verbal skills may or may not indicate giftedness. They certainly don't indicate a slow witted child! My early talker has always been a very capable person. I put him in charge of his older brother because I could count on him to size a situation up more quickly, and his brother although 2 years older wasn't a leader. However my early talker, despite obvious signs of intelligence, appreciation of art etc. did extremely poorly in school, struggling mightily to get through each school year. He barely graduated from HS and has a job in customer service. He is still just as smart, but a devastating learning disability means that should he decide to try school again he will need to be extremely motivated and work twice (or more) as hard as the others to get through the entire year.
That's my story. Enjoy your kids - those early years are so precious. It's so exhilarating to discover just what kind of little person you've brought into the world. I can feel that through all of your posts and I'm brought back to that time when every single thing they did was a novelty. I'm glad I can still remember those times at all!
Among the "some signs of giftedness" listed by NZAGC on its flyer, is "may talk early and fluently".
My gifted son was a verbal baby (like me). He was using clear words (lots formed about the same time) from 10mnths and his vocab growth was exponential after that. He was fully conversational and grammatically correct by 17months. Verbal, language, reading, spelling - range of skills is still a very strong suit for him, well ahead of his yr level in primary school.
His father was similarly linguistically strong (but then there wasn't anything that he wasn't great at!). As an infant however, this gifted person barely spoke until he was nearly 3yrs old, but when he begin to speak he spoke in grammatically correct sentences and was fully conversant. His mother also described that he was independent reading (newspapers and signs) and was able to write at about the same time.
His personality was that of a perfectionist. It appears that as an infant (as in his adult life) if he wasn't going to do it well, then he wouldn't do it at all. So, maybe he chose to listen and master this craft (communicating) before participating with others in it. I think it likely that early verbal skills is an indicator of giftedness, but it isn't the case that all gifted individuals do "speak" early, as some may choose to listen and learn the entire system before they reveal they do get it.
The one thing you can be sure of is that all children will learn to speak as all people are wired to learn language (more than words) - Bertrand Russell is great author on this. But not every fully verbal person will be capable of completing the cryptic and every other word puzzle on a daily basis!
My daughter was speaking in sentences at 15 months, and my son was talking non-stop at a similar age but we couldn't understand a word he said (later discovered he had glue ear problems, so he couldn't mimic sounds correctly). But, although I know there are some smart kids in our family, I believe the smartest one of all is my nephew who never spoke a word until age 3.5. Now age 6 he talks non-stop, has an impressive general knowledge, writes his own newspaper every day, and has the most amazing imagination. Another Einstein in the making I suspect! Just goes to show that giftedness is not necessarily linked to early verbal skills.
Hi Misty - I"m glad you shared your observation about your highly gifted nephew not being "an early talker." Like the person I know,he doesn't fit a 'typical' gifted profile. So I think it important to remind readers that in NZAGC providing 'some signs' of giftedness, that there isn't a simple well defined/agreed set of characteristics that all gifted share. They do come in different guises and reasons (e.g glue ear) why some display this or that 'sign' and not others. And, developmental milestones are reached by most children at some time (early or late isn't relevant if the milestone is pretty much standard). So, with talking, it might not be so important if they are early talkers or not, but more about what they are talking about that produces the surprises for adults with whom they are talking. And, if a child doesn't display some of the signs (e.g. didn't talk till 3), but has many others then that that reminds me of something I heard at a GATE conference "Gifted is as gifted does" - I liked that it flips the Forrest Gump quote - where he responds to a question about if he is stupid by saying his mother said to him... "stupid is as stupid does." His mother enabled Forrest to forget about if he was stupid or not and just get on with being the best Forrest he could be.
My grandson begun to speak meaningfully around 5 months old .... from memory he continued to do so until somewhere around a year old ..... and then he just stopped talking. Instead he developed a very complex system that was a mix of charades, distinct sounds (eg 'woof' 'meow' 'grrrrr') and using his preschool laptop to 'tell' me the first letter .... and he would smash his head against things if I didnt understand until one day I sat him down and told him the I was having trouble learning to understand him and it would be really really helpful to me if he could just be more patient with me while Im still learning.
your child sounds very clever and similar to my middle child at that age. he was speaking in three or four word, very clear sentences at 15 months, knew his alphabet completely by 17 or 18 months, and read numbers including longer ones like 125, 85 etc (but not all larger numbers) at 20 months and was writing words - spelling them out phonetically - on the computer at 3 years 2 months.
but its the more tangential brainy stuff thats really interesting. one of his earlier words was "similar" - which he came up with at about 18 to 19 months. he would point out the similarity as opposed to sameness of things.
yet, my third child was hardly speaking by 1 and I think he may even be brighter. they're so interesting aren't they?
I have had one of each. My daughter was talking in sentences at 13 mths, however as she is dyslexic, it took a long time of extra help to have her reading well. My son on the other hand had to have speech therapy at 4 yrs - although the therapist did say that it wasn't a lack of vocab, rather a difficulty in pronouncing all the words he was trying to say! He learnt to read very quickly however. By now (9 1/2 and 11 1/2) both have evened out - they talk and read (almost) as well as each other.
I had a similar experience. My daughter said mama at 10 weeks and no one believed that she knew what she was saying. She only did it when I put her down or walked away from her or if she woke up and wanted me. I thought it was pretty obvious. Then at four months she said it all the time. By one year she knew so many words I listed many but gave up, It came to 125 words kitty, mama, Au-yee for Ollie, ba for bye, walfy for Ralphy, baba for bottle, gaMa for grandma, book, simple words. I told the doctor that she was talking at a check up when she was four months and he said he was sure she was bright but that four months was "quite precocious". Again he didn't think it was true. We met another doctor and he picked up on it instantly and said at that time you have a smart one and to nurture her well. I did of course, she's my only child and had tons of attention from me. One thing I thought assisted in her development is that I began reading to her very, very early, at bed time I went through hours of books. She's in college today, her SAT scores were highest in reading comprehension. I placed her in a pilot Spanish Immersion course in third grade and French in fifth. Then three four years of Latin and three of Spanish in high school. She wanted to try different languages. She spent some time in France and began to love the language. Today she's taking a break from language because her classes are enough. She's enjoying college. In my day no one gave any interest in my observations. I'm happy for the moms of today that you do!!! Enjoy those kids! They grow up too fast!
Just to offer a different story. My daughter at 13ths months was talking in sentences. At all the plunket check ups from about 9ths, they wrote 'talking very advanced'. By two she was debating me and by 3 she was verbally able to back me into a corner.
However by 5 1/2 we realised that she was dyslexic and reading has never come easy to her. At 12 1/2, she is extremely mature, very able in communication and she is now starting to read for relaxation and fun. It has been a long road and a huge amount of work and she'll never be a fantastic reader, writer or speller. However she is probably still above average and it has given her the opportunity to learn perseverance and hard work!
Hi! Have really enjoyed reading this thread. Ours was a very early talker too. By 'talking' I'm meaning language that anyone on the street could understand. Language that family could understand started well under a year old and before that there was an enormous amount of sheer enjoyment of vocalising - any new sound she discovered she could make, she'd make non-stop (it felt like 24-7) until a new sound was discovered! The early talking was wonderful as we could really communicate, at an age when other kids were still on the 'mumumumumdadadad' type sounds. Very complex intelligent sentences, grammatically correct, before she was 18mths. From there: in terms of language it's continued to be advanced. The written and oral language at year 8 at sch was assessed as being university entrance level. Other subjects also advanced but not quite to that level. Physical development has been normal but isn't the favourite way to spend time! Hard socially as the other kids are just on a different wavelength so it's very hard to find a friend. With all the pluses however has come a very complex, highly strung, emotionally-behind fragile side which is a tightrope to live with, so so hard at times and I just hope we make it through to an easier time. Good luck to anyone in the same situation - never stop loving, keep firm boundaries there, take the hugs while you can.
By the way our second was quite early to talk, not to the same extent but still well ahead, with clear words at 10 mths. Is slightly above average academically but really advanced physically, very spatial and the world's biggest cheergerm :-)
