My 17 month, who will be 1 1/2 in 2 weeks, says about 4 words. He says momma, dadda, nanna, and pap-pap. He understands when we ask him to get something, he waves bye-bye, gives hugs and kisses.... and points to things, but no words come out. He grunts, moans and points. At his 15 month check-up, the doctor told us he should be speaking more. She said for us to consider speech therapy classes. To me, this seems a little extreme... IS IT? We color and draw letters, we read to him all the time, we go for walks and point things out. Will he be ready on his own or should I consider taking him to speech classes? He is my first son and I am just worried that it might push him into not wanting to talk on his own. He is very smart on a lot of other things. He has his 18 month check-up in 2 weeks and I know it will be a topic the doctor will talk about. I would love to hear comments! Thanks so much!!

It is not too extreme to have speech therapy, however I would suggest that before you consider speech therapy to do something that will be a bit hard.  When he grunts or points, do you know what he wants and do you give it to him?  If so, this is giving him the idea that he doesn't have to talk if he can just grunt and point.  Talking involves effort and like most kids he's taking the easy way.  You're doing a great job in coloring and drawing letters and reading to him.  Now I wold recommend that instead of giving him what he wants when he grunts and points, he has to talk before you give it to him.  Any speech therapist will tell you that.  Save yourself the money and time with one and try doing that first.  If at his two year check up he's still not talking and the "forcing" him to talk has not worked, then try the speech therapy.  You can also rule out teething by purchasing a chewy tube which is a tube shaped in the letter 'T' that allows for chewing with the molars.  Every teething toy I've ever seen in stores doesn't do that.  Yes it will drive you up the wall when he throws tantrums because you want him to talk, but trust me, in the end it will be worth it.  I had to do that with my now 5 year old and it worked.  Hope this helps.  

Hi and welcome!

I haven't been as active around here as I'd like to be, but wanted to reply to your post.  Let me start off by saying, maybe it's a bit too early to worry, maybe not.  Boys do progress a bit later than girls, but not always. A lot of kids are communicating very well by 18 mos, some are not.  It's one of those "is he in the normal range scenarios?".  All of my 4 kids were "early" talkers, but my youngest lost his language by 18 mos and he had almost 25 words.  It's been a long process, but he has regained it in huge leaps and bounds (with a bit of help from mommy).

Look in the resouce lists over to the right of this page, there are lots of resources for you to try now at home with him. I would work with him now, contact your early intervention program in a couple of months if you don't see any progress, and by the time he is 2, if he needs therapy, you are already in the stages of the process that can take 3-4 months to get going!  If he doesn't need it, you can cancel, and feel confident that you were prepared.

best of luck to you!
Check out my group: on CafeMom I have tons of info and resources to help you get started!

Thank you ladies so much! I see that Im not the only one with this problem. I actually do give in when he points and grunts because I dont know what else to do when he throws fits and then I feel bad for him. I guess I need some work on that! :) He is not delayed in any other area. He has 3 molors already and his last one is right there to come out. I will have to see if I can order him a molar teether. I am going to try all the advice I get. I have heard that boys are late talkers but I just thought he would be saying so much more by now. I bought a baby sign book at around 7 months old and started him on that but around 1 year, I gave up cus he wasnt doing anything. I think thats my major downfall as being a parent. I need to be more consistant, I guess. But I will try these suggestions and I will be more consistant with him. Thanks again so much and I will work with him for as long as it takes!! I will see what his doctor says in 2 weeks and we will go from there.

Good Luck and let us know if you need anything.  I'm still working on my 5 year old to speak in sentences.  

First, welcome to the group. second, i agree with what everyone on here said. my 5 year old is bright. knows about all types of things. he was bright at 2 and 3 years old too. he's been in speech therapy since he turned 3. i know a lot of people may look at my son and not realize he's smart because they can't understand what he tries to say, but we are working on that part. the two things (knowledge and speaking) don't always go together. the only other thing i'd add is definitely try to get him to talk when he points and grunts at things, but keep in mind, at this point, the grunt might be the best he has. my son has apraxia and i know with him, what he was trying to say and what actually came out were two greatly different things. the thing i was told when we started therapy was to constantly model speech for him. so, an easy request in our house went like this...

arden said "jkdl;jfkdl;jiojniop;iopskdh" completely unintelligible to me...with a point to something.

me: "do you want a drink of water?"

A: "yes"

me: "water, mommy. i want water, please. water" all the while i'm getting his water. then i'd have it and say "can you say water, arden"

A: "wa"

me: right- "WA-TER, water."

or something along those lines. and his "wa" sometimes was not that clear or whatever, but we had to reward the effort and keep saying it correctly for him.

so, hopefully that wasn't too confusing...sometimes i hate typing since talking is so much easier...let me know if that came through all right. i think my brain isn't working well at the moment

I understand competely. Thanks!! And I honestly do say that stuff when he points to things and I ask him if "THIS" (I say whatever he points to) is what he wants. And he nods his head. So I know he understands me but he just isnt talking. But I am looking for any advice. And I appreciate everything you ladies are telling me!!

I know this is a lot of info, and having been there, it's really overwhelming the amount of stuff we have to do/learn/impliment on top of the heavy workload of being mothers.  One thing that has helped me, when I really started thinking about it since my last post, was the fact that we meet with our ST once a week, and develope these weekly goals.  There's no reason why you couldn't establish a weekly goal. At the very beginning, it was one new sign a week for us. We started with 'more', because it was such an easy one to motivate him with. 'more' food, 'more' game, 'more' hug. Then we moved on to milk, juice, water, eat, thank you, please, sorry.  As I began to grasp how fast he could learn signs, I just started banging them out with him whenever a new concept caught his attention. "helmut", "outside", "sandwich" were all learned because they were things that were important to him.  Any tfav. toy or person, food or activity are big motivators for our little people.

On the subject of what our kids understand: STs will call this 'receptive language'  and what they can say is 'expressive language'.  Most evals will try to quantify both of these, but it's hard to do until about age two or so, because they just don't always have the follow thru skills; they are toddlers after all.  Our son's receptive language is off the charts it seems, so we can ask him all kinds of questions, ask him to find things in a stack of items. Flash cards become really handy for this.  Our special insturctor played some games with us that demo'd our son's receptive language, by asking him to choose a specific card between two cards and 'put it on top of the table', or 'put it under the chair'.  Our son was about 26 months at that point, and was johnny on the spot with the directions and follow thru.  It was a real eye opener for me, I didn't know he knew this stuff!