When did your kids start talking?

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My son will be 3 in August and just recently started putting two words together. He didn't start using words at all until a month past his 2nd birthday, so we're just happy he talks at all. Still, I'm wondering what other people's experiences have been with their kids.

We've never had Lucas diagnosed but we know he's either got Asperger's or mild Autism. Just curious what to expect, language-wise.

Thanks!

I think this one is all over the map, and one of the things they tend to use distinguish AS from HFA, even though truthfully I don't think it has much to do with anything.

My son was a wonderful and early talker. But he isn't a perfectionist. I think you see a different result with kids who are AS or HFA AND are perfectionists (non-scientific observation).

My son was talking in phrases by 12 months, "I got a job to do!" " I need this".....by 15 months he'd regressed and wasn't saying a word. He was identified as speech delayed at 2.5 y/o, by my daughters cleft palate surgery team, they were the first Dr's to say anything about his speech. We have been told multiple times now, even tho he shows all other signs of AS, that he cann't possibly have AS because of his speech delay and the fact that he looks people in the eyes

He's now 4, he just ended his pre-school speech therapy for the year and starts back up in Aug. He's talking up a storm and has actual conversations, altho most of them are focus related or repeating stories of happenings thruout the day, it's still a convo that is music to our ears.

my son wasn't even saying "mama" by 2. We had him in speech therapy for 6-9 months and he caught up quite a bit. Now he is five and his verbal skills during the Aspergers test scored as an 8 or 9 year old

He loves talking about dinosaurs and I can't even pronounce some of the dinos he can.

My son started talking in phrases and short sentences at about 18 months, and hasn't stopped talking.

Does Lucas have any older siblings? Sometimes that can affect how early a child talks.

I USED to be a perfectionist, and started speaking by about 10 months. My mother said I NEVER babbled!

Thanks for all your replies!

DW_a_mom: I have heard the same thing about speech determining the distinction between AS and HFA. I asked the executive director of our rehab clinic about that very thing and she said it's not always the case and that she's seen AS kids had speech delays in their youth. Personally, I don't know firsthand. I'm still new to this whole field since being thrust into it 15 months ago. I probably should get my son diagnosed to get the official distinction, but part of me doesn't really care about the label, you know?

Marcia: Lucas is an only child. But he does attend day care from 9 am. to 5 p.m. and is around tons of kids both his age and older. He is well-liked in daycare and, according to the teachers, does very well there even though he has charmed most of the teachers into giving him special favors.

Lucas's first word was "apple" when he was about 12 months old. But he lost it after a few weeks and didn't regain it until we restricted his diet (GFCF) at 17 months. His vocabulary today is immense but he continues to talk in only one-word or two-word phrases or in memorized phrases that he's heard us say before ("there you go" or "leave it alone"). He uses all these words/phrases in their appropriate context, but his speech sounds slurred/sloppy and is extremely difficult to decipher.

Otherwise, he's smart as a whip. He has known his ABCs forwards and backwards since 2 years old and can count to 20 no problem. He knows his shapes, colors, animals, songs, etc. etc. etc. But he has a hard time expressing himself using age-appropriate language.

My little lady who is 4 was 10 months when she started and had a vocab of 50-100 words by 12 months. She did babble but not a whole lot of vocalizing as a wee baby. She is the possible AS child.

Her brother is almost 2 and only just starting to say understandable things, still hard to understand even for me half the time. He has vocalized since almost day 1 though. He hasn't showed anything of concern WRT AS at this point.

My daughter was only speaking in single words at 2. She started putting 2 words together somewhere between 2.5 and 3, like your son. She entered speech therapy at 3 and has been in it ever since. She is now 9 and puts together perfectly logical and complete sentences and talks just like an NT kid with one caveat. That caveat is what she chooses to say. She has trouble with speech pragmatics and exactly what things will work in a conversation. She will also often perseverate on one subject until you just want to say "talk about something else!! !". But the sentence structure itself is absolutely normal and she followed the same trajectory your son seems to be on of not putting 2 words together until scarily close to 3.

mom of Lucas:

You say his speech sounds sloppy? In what way?

For my son it's his lack of use of consonants, which makes it extremely difficult to understand him at times, for example, it took us 30 minutes recently to determine that "ooo-eee's" weren't cookies but in fact footies, his pj's of choice atm, yeah that was a nuclear meltdown of epic proportions til we figured it out. He is getting slowly better at times with his speech, he's able to hold a somewhat understandable conversation now.

Janissy: Your story gives me hope that my son might follow the same path and be speaking normally in a few years - at least in sentence structure. I can already tell that his speech will focus on topics of his interest because even now he fixates on certain things: He's obsessed with flowers, butterflies and trains and says these words constantly throughout the day!

Xinae: I mean sloppy by lack of consonants, like you describe with your own son. For example:
butterfly = uh-duh-fwy
bird = buh
ball = bah
choo-choo train = ah-choo-chay
flower = fwah-wuh
kitty cat = ah-tah-kah
outside = ow-sigh

You get the idea. He also fills in blanks with "dugga dugga" For example, when he tells us he wants to go outside, he'll say "dugga dugga ow-sigh?" It's like he can't remember what all that other gobbldy-gook is in the sentence before the key word, so he just throws in a "dugga dugga," maybe that's because how our speech sounds to his ears.

If in fact your son follows a similar speech trajectory to my daughter, I might as well tell you what happened when she got past the 2-words-together stage your son is in (at the same age she was). What came next was echolalia. Once she got the ability to say a sentence, she spent about 2 years mainly saying other people's sentences (echolalia) rather than creating unique ones of her own. That's part of what got her the autism diagnosis. But she didn't just freeze in place there (though from listening to the docs and evaluators I sure worried she was going to). After a long while of just rote repeating, she started using her echolalia sentences as a way to have conversations and convey information. It was as though instead of making up her own sentences, she compiled a catalogue of 200 memorized sentences from listening to us and some from favorite videos and used whichever memorized sentence was the closest fit.

Next step after that: she would change one or two words within the echolalia sentences to make the fit even better. For example, she would take the memorized sentence, "quite a blustery day isn't it, Eyore" (from Winnie the Pooh) but say "night" instead or say "mom" instead. So the echolalia sentences stopped being absolutely rote and started being frameworks she could hang new words on for a better fit to what she wanted to say. Eventually there were so many word subsitutions and grammar substitutions that you could no longer tell what used to be a memorized sentence from a 100% original creation.

Now the only thing left of the echolalia is an uncanny ability to memorize things other people say and then call them on it ("but you said...") and also the ability to memorize song lyrics.

So there is hope. But there also should be speech therapy. She started when she was 3 (and where your son is now) and still has speech therapy but by age 9 it has morphed into lessons with a group of similar kids on how to converse comfortably with each other.

My son, Nate, is five years old. He didn't really start to talk until he was around 2 years. 6 months. He really took off around 4 years.
He just wasn't interested in communicating. I don't believe it's because he didn't have the ability, he just didn't see a reason. We tried the strategies of having him communicate his wants and needs instead of doing everything for him but he would just not eat or drink. I wasn't going to let him starve or dehydrate.

Nate was more interested in how things work. He is still like that but talks incessantly. He drives me crazy sometimes because he won't stop talking but I absolutely love him. It makes things more interesting and I learn a lot from him.

My son didn't have a lot of echolalia because he wasn't interested in communicating. He does copy some sentences now but it's usually at a time the conversation or situations are related to what he is saying.

Janissy: Thanks for cluing me into the next potential step in my son's speech development. I have noticed a tendency for him to repeat our phrases (with the same tones and cadences we use), as well as songs and such he hears from his favorite DVDs. I hope that if he does get echolalia to that degree, maybe it won't endure as long as you had with your daughter's. But at this point, I'd be ELATED to hear one clear sentence with more than a few words - even if it was just a line from Barney!

Natesmom: Thanks for sharing your experience with your son! Lucas used to sound like your son, but we've really coaxed into him our world these past 15 months to the point where he now loves to show us things and talk about things. So, I think he's going to be a big talker and already is (just in one-word sentences).

It's so good to hear comments from other parents. Thank you all so much for sharing your experiences with me.

My son was not diagnosed until he was 5, wish it would've been sooner...so his speech therapy did not start until he was almost 6...his speech was very limited, possibly as good as your 3yr old's right now at that time...He is doing much better...

I would strongly recommend you at least get him into speech therapy...the whole diagnosis thing is really more than anything for the schools, blah, blah...

But you should try to get him into speech therapy as it will greatly help him. You can normally have him evaluated for speech at either the schools, free or Shriner's...

Whatamess: I neglected to say in my original or subsequent posts that Lucas has been in speech therapy for more than a year. Although we never got "the diagnosis," we did get him evaluated for special services. They're technically treating a speech delay and sensory processing disorder through speech and occupational therapy.

It's only a half hour each, twice weekly, so hard to know how much of a difference it's making. My husband and I wonder if our son would be progressing along the same timeline regardless. But it certainly doesn't hurt, and it's good to get some professional assistance. Plus, it's free!

We also do the GFCF diet, which made an immediate impact for us. And we see a specialist who treats these kids with anti-fungals and anti-virals. Again, we don't know if it's helping our not, since we don't have a control group to compare it to. But it's not hurting, so we're trying.

All that to say, we're definitely getting help. And our son is definitely progressing, but it always seems to take longer than I'd like. Story of my life ...