Speech Development
We've been very lucky with Elizabeth.
She slept through the night at less than a month old. She eats well. She sleeps well. She's never been sick. She's affectionate. She's smart. We don't deal with picky eating. We don't deal with pacifiers or a refusal to wean from bottles, thumb-sucking, etc. We don't deal with food allergies or ear infections or learning disabilities, etc.
So...we know that we're very lucky.
Elizabeth is beginning to worry us in one area, though. She's 22 months old this week...and she doesn't talk. At all. Not one word.
She doesn't nominate anything with language. She doesn't say "mama" or "daddy" or "cup" or "cookie" or "drink" or even "no." Nothing...nada...zippo. For a while, we thought she was saying "uh-oh," but she never really copied the sounds properly; just copied the inflection. She never used it to mean "oops," either. She simply mimicked the inflection whenever the mood struck her. So...we cannot really count that as speech in the developmental sense.
Her hearing has been checked multiple times. She understand an absolutely amazing body of language, already. We speak to her all the time and she responds with understanding to a huge number of words and phrases. She just doesn't repeat any of them or try to copy speech sounds.
She watches her Baby Einstein videos and responds with understanding to all the activities and phrases from them. She knows lots of body parts and will point to the appropriate part when you say the name. She can put shape puzzles together and is beginning to learn colors by name. She is riveted by story time and insists on having book after book read to her. Like most toddlers, she has a few favorites and she wants to hear them over and over. It is clear that she has made the connection in her mind that text on the page equals words that someone can say...because she will pick the books up, point to the text, and "read" in Lizzie babble to her stuffed animals.
So...we just cannot figure out why in the world she hasn't begun to speak.
She is behind. She is WAY behind. Lizzie's lack of speech is no longer in the range of "normal," so Ashley and I feel strongly that a diagnosis/intervention of some sort would be the responsible and right thing to do. We'll are looking into getting her an appointment with a speech pathologist ASAP. The medical staff on base is very VERY overloaded right now, so it might be a while before we can get a referral. Once I get the appointment, I will post an update.