when did your child start talking?

[christie]

Wow! Thanks so much! You just described our daughter exactly ( very physically active for sure). Today I asked her to throw her diaper in the trash (she loves to help), and she actually did it! I was impressed. Thanks for putting my mind as ease!

[St.LouisMO]

Our son is 19 months old and just now repeating words we say (although he won't give tries for all words). Our parents as teachers (a program through our school district) assured us he was on target with no concern. Continue doing what your doing those are great strategies. Encourage something said when she wants somethings like another bite, drink, activity, etc. Our son now says peas (please) for everything he wants. We are trying to encourage the individual words. He has said /d/ for drink before and now refuses. I won't give him his drink for just "peas" because I know he can say it. After he cries a bit, he will say the /d/ sound. I am a kindergarten teacher with an early childhood degree. If you don't see more words by age 2 1/2-3, I would look into screenings. See what your school district offers. Our 'teacher' comes to our house once a quarter and in summer (adoption in general is considered special needs for extra visits). She gives lots of articles and suggestions for teaching skills. She administers screenings like the DENVER for early childhood. I am sure your district has the available - our district even has evening hours for working parents and Dad can be home too. My five year old pre-schooler also does the program.

[Beyond Blessed]

Our bio son was a preemie and at 18 months was not speaking much and was very frustrated. The doctor ordered a hearing test (he passed with flying colors) and Early Intervention testing. In our state they combine the cognitive and speech scores, and his cognitive score was so high it offset the low speech score, so he did not qualify for services.

He did learn signs, so we could communicate, but for us the maddening part was when he would get flustered because we did not know what he wanted and he would wail! Ah..that was the hardest part, knowing how frustrated he was!

Well now he is three and at his last doctor appointment the doctor commented on how well and how much he is talking. He is right on target. Although he still wails when he gets frustrated or overstimulated, I chalk it up mainly to his status as a Preemie..he seems much more sensitive to surroundings and changes to schedule/routine than our oldest.

[JBFazzNJ]

Our youngest child was a late talker. We taught him a lot of signs. My mom thought that he would become dependant upon signing and that it would inhibit his speech. I asked our Early Intervention speech therapist who said that it will absolutely not inhibit learning to talk as long as you say the word along with the sign. We continued signing (really helped cut down frustration situations) along with speaking and he did eventually learn to talk.

Also, the speech therapist from EI said that the ability to speak is no indication of intelligence. I was happily surprised to learn that.

[asia_mom]

My Korean-born son was adopted at 6 months. His speech was delayed, but we unfortunately had testing done at the wrong time of year. He had a chronic adenoid infection that kept him sick all winter long, but would back off in the warm months (when we had him tested). We finally found he had a moderate hearing loss 6 months out of the year due to fluid in his ears, and were able to kick the infection at last with a whole month of strong antibiotic. It was his last chance too, we were getting ready to do surgery the next time he got sick. Thank goodness for Augmentin! We were worried about intelligence too, but he is one smart little boy! We also did some baby signs with him, my favorites were the ones he made up himself.

Our daughter was adopted at 23.5 months, and from what I understand she was only saying a couple of single words in Chinese when we got her. Quiet was encouraged at her SWI. By the time we got home, she had picked up about 10 words in English, and then STOPPED making progress for a very long time. Our state's early intervention program would not help..."what do you expect, she's Chinese!" We were encouraged that she quickly began to understand US, but it was probably two years before she got up to the very low end of "normal" in expressive speech (which I questioned...it still didn't sound very normal to me). She still wasn't communicating easily when she started Kindergarten, but she soaked everything in. I'd say it was 4 years before she could speak with ease. And that was without any professional intervention. So get help if you can, but also realize it can take a child quite a bit of time, especially if they were adopted right around the time they would have started to become verbal. I worried a LOT, but like another poster said, now I can't get her to stop talking! And she is doing very well in school in spite of some struggles through the 1st grade.

[christie]

Hello again, well here we are about a two months after my post. It's like she knew her mommy was getting concerned so she decided to start talking. She tries to repeat any word I say. The cutest is when she repeats banana. It sounds more like nanana and her little voice goes up in the middle of the word and she tilts her head as she says it. So....cute! I know....it's a mommy thing! Anyway....just wanted to encourage anyone else out there not to get too concerned right away.

While I'm on here.....I used to post my pics from photo bucket to my signature. I can't get my pic on here now that things have changed. Any advice on how to get pics up? We finalized and I wanted to share some pics. I can't even get the pic that I used to have back up. UGH!!!

[christie]

Never mind about the pics! I figured it out. Sorry about that!

[Lillie]

Christie, your daughter is adorable!

[christie]

Lillie, your kids are absolutely adorable as well. Is your daughter coming home soon?

[Lillie]

We're hoping to get travel call (TC) in the next couple of months. We already have I-600a & I-600 approval on the US side. The timing mostly rests on when her emigration permit (EP) gets approved. If I had to guess, we'll probably get travel call sometime between mid-March and mid-April plus or minus a couple of weeks.