My 21 Month Old Isn’t Talking

If he can hear a dog bark, and say "dog" that's a good sign of his hearing. Mine couldn't do that at that age. He ended up with tubes in his ears.

My son's hearing was affected due to fluid, and his speech was affected. It sounded off - so he had words, but they didn't sound right. They sounded 'vowely' only way I can describe it. So 'ball' was like 'baaawwwl'.

I could say his name if he was turned from me, and he wouldn't turn around.

So if your son can hear his name if he's not looking at you, that's a good sign.

However, hearing can be muffled just from a cold. That can delay some kids' speech by a few months.

Some kids just take a break from speech and work on something else. That was my nephew. He had words at your son's age, but didn't start stringing them all together until 2 1/2 then you couldn't get him to stop talking.

If he's had colds, ear infections etc. then you could look at having hearing tested and a visit to ENT, otherwise, I'd trust your pediatrician.

ETA: Reading the other moms' advice, I too would suggest trusting your own mommy instinct. We did, and worked with our pediatrician. If you don't feel you can trust your son's, then you might want a second opinion.

Can you elaborate? At 8-9 months, what was he doing? Babbling, right? Not forming a lot of words. What is he doing now? Does he respond to sounds, look up when you call his name, make some sounds, perhaps has a vocabulary of a dozen words or more but isn't making sentences? It's impossible to suggest anything with no info. Is he doing other things that are developmentally appropriate (walking, mastering fine motor skills, able to follow along and point to things in a good as you read, singing/dancing in some way...and so on)?

I agree that his hearing should be tested, that you should have a doctor you trust. If a child is delayed in many areas, that's more significant than having one area where he doesn't seem to be quite where you think he should be. There are probably Early Intervention Services in your community. Talk to your doctor, and talk to the school system to see what's available at this age for EI. You can also talk to any good children's librarian to find some books that will help you get an idea of what to expect at different ages/stages. Those are general, of course, but they are helpful benchmarks.

Have you had his hearing tested?
If you don't trust your doctor then find another doctor but advice from strangers on the internet isn't going to help as much as a doctor will.

Make an appointment with Early Intervention. The evaluation is free and so is any therapy if they think thst there is a problem. Google Early Intervention and your state for contact info.

You have mommy sense. You don't have to just accept from the doctor that it's normal. What you CAN do is get an evaluation done for your child from a speech/language pathologist. Get the appointment for right after he turns 24 months. At 24 months, there are more expectations of what a child is supposed to be able to say. A team approach for the evaluation is very helpful, by the way.

I had the same problem you have, with the ped saying not to worry about it. I decided that I wanted the eval regardless of what my doctor said, and I got it. Good thing I did, because he needed speech therapy.

At the very least, the speech therapist will tell you what you can do to help. I went to all my son's speech therapy sessions and went by the home programs to the tee. It made a huge difference for me to know what I could do to help him.

You have 3 months to get to the 24 month old mark. Get your 2 year well visit check-up right around his birthday, and don't take no for an answer in getting an evaluation.

It would be a good idea to have him screened for autism. Our son was on schedule up to about a year. He had a vocabulary of about ten words. By 18 months, he had lost his vocabulary. He's pretty high on the spectrum, and he couldn't point to what he wants. But even if lower on the spectrum, early intervention makes a huge difference.

Maybe that's not it, but it would be worth finding out.

BTW, the doctors told us there was no problem, too-- until he started banging his head on the floor so hard we had to get him a CT scan to find out if he'd damaged his brain. Even then, we had to push to get him evaluated because the docs took a "wait and see" approach. DO NOT wait and see. He's doing well today (almost 4 years old) because we got him help early.