…or rather look who isn’t.

Hector is currently 17 months and is yet to really say a proper word and I’m getting my knickers in a right old twisty knot about it.

So far we have ‘Dad’, ‘uh-oh’ (expressed obviously when anything goes wrong or to soften the blow when he does something that he really shouldn’t) and a half mangled ‘bye’ but that’s about it. I’m not overly concerned that there’s something physically wrong…at least I don’t think I am… but I can’t help but wondering why his vocabulary is limited to just three words at this stage of his life.

They say comparison is the thief of joy (and it’s true) but I definitely think it’s a mum thing to compare and contrast her baby/toddler/fully grown child to other littles. A combination of new NCT friends and some of my besties having kids within a month of Hector means that whilst I have the most amazing support network I also have a plethora of kids of a similar age by which I’m unintentionally benchmarking Hector’s progress. Please don’t misunderstand me I’m not trying to be competitive, anything but (!), instead it’s more of a ‘is he doing all the things he’s supposed to be doing at this stage’ kind of reassurance. Except it’s not so reassuring when the other kids are steaming ahead on the chatting agenda.

I know that generally females are more advanced than boys when it comes to speaking and extending vocabulary and it’s true; I’ve seen it for myself. I’ve got friends with little girls equivalent to Hector’s age that can name all the animals and parrot the noises that each creature makes too. There’s even one (younger) little girl at Hector’s nursery who can name all the colours and count to five! Mind boggling.

Yes, I’ve also been told on numerous occasions that Einstein didn’t speak before he was five or was it six? And look how he turned out…a total genius. Hector’s nursery didn’t seem particularly worried either when I voiced my concerns; they’re comfortable with how he’s developing given that all kids progress in individual areas at different rates. It doesn’t stop me fretting though.

I don’t think it particularly helped that Hector seemed to do lots of things early during his first twelve months. Rolling, crawling, climbing all seemed to come naturally to him fairly early on and if anything I was surprised that he mastered so many skills ahead of the conventional BabyCentre schedule. He stacked like the best of them, walked at the average 13 months and could even find the right back door key from a pot filled with them and put it in the lock of the back door. I guess I just got used to the fact that he did things with ease and picked up new skills as easily as I pop things in the trolley on the supermarket shop.

It’s clear that he fully understands everything we say or at least seemingly does so. He knows, for example, what he needs to do when we ask him to put his wellies on (albeit with a bit of help), who to go to when we refer to different family members and/or toys and gives us the most endearing open-mouthed smooches when we demand a ‘kiss’. And he’s chatty too, in fact very chatty, to the point where he’s having a full on conversation about what I imagine to be really interesting stuff…except none of it makes sense…to us anyway. All we can do is nod and agree and ask questions and express amazement at what he’s trying to tell us.

We’ve tried playing games, repeating colours and numbers and words, emphasising what something is called when we hand it to him and generally chatting to him all the while. We read regularly to him, several times a day in fact so it’s not as if he’s not getting lots of exposure to the English language.

So I guess this is I where I ask you for your own experiences. When did your little ones start talking? Did you have any concerns? What games or techniques did you use to help your toddler build their language skills? I’d love to hear all about it.