13 month old not talking

From the very moment a child is born, the parents start worrying about their child. This is mostly not their fault as it happens due to pure affection. From the very first month, parents eagerly wait for the time when their child would start speaking.

At what age should you worry about a child not talking?

Although it doesn’t occur at the same age-month for every child when they become around 13 months old, where mostly the children can speak or just understand three or four lovely words.

Just after the first couple of months, children try to learn from their surroundings. They try to recognize humans, remember a few things, and try to observe the people around them. Soon they would learn to call and recognize the mother and the father. But if you are having doubts that your child’s speech might be delayed then 13 months is not the age you should be freaking out at.

It’s much obvious that parents would have so many questions every once in while about their child. Especially a lot of questions would be in the section regarding the child’s speech and cognitive developments. Many might even assume to be something wrong with their child and search with prejudiced questions like a 13-month-old not talking. But not being able to speak three or four words is not much of lacking behind, which is the general vocabulary for children around one-year-old. They might just be able to say mama and dada with the addition of words like ‘bye’ or just “do” for dogs.

Knowing the common speech development around six months age

From the very first day, the one thing they do close to talking is listening. They listen to every sound with great curiosity. Slowly they begin to identify the source with the sound, if you start a fan they learn that the whirling is sound is originating from the fan. In the very first month, the prime mode of communication would be crying.

Baby Words Timeline

Most of the emotions would take the shape of tears but only for the first couple of months. They would start to use their tongue and mouth in a fairly proper way to make elongated vowel placed sounds like ‘aaaa’, ‘oooo’, and similar gurgling sounds. It is difficult to tell but just after they are one month old the distinguishing qualities of speech in them start to form. They can separate between similar sounds like ‘pa’ and ‘ma’.

From around four months to six months of age some further developments occur in terms of speech formation. Parents should start to hint at the children some alphabets which they would soon memorize the sound of and make on their own, like ‘m’, ‘g’, ‘b’, mainly the alphabets which are easy to spell. Alphabets like ‘x’ , ‘j’ ,’z’ will take much longer time to learn.

The baby would commonly be able to learn words of greet such as ‘hi’ or ‘bye’ and even learn to say important words like the own name. But the child wouldn’t know the importance of the word or it is being referred to the baby himself or herself until the child reaches a minimum of six months of age.

When the much-developed phases arrive which is around seven to twelve months. At this age, the babbling language of their own will begin to sound like words. Suddenly you might feel like the child has become a student of Lady Gaga as the one thing they might constantly blabber will sound like ‘gaga gaga’ and words much similar. This is happening around seven to eight months of age and the child’s vocabulary would start to sound more clear.

The magic would increase at the mark of nine months when the child would begin to understand and use gestures. The child would adorably point out objects and would change the parent’s attention to that pointed object. Often the child would point out entities which he or she would want, the other reason might be to point out something which has astonished the child.

The words variance

To the question when do children start uttering more than two words clearly, as per the opinion of experts that happens around 12 months. This is the age where their vocabulary and memory would begin to show remarkable growth. They would utter more social words and worldly entities like cat, bird, milk, eat, and more similar words which vary from child to child. The words they would first learn comes very naturally from what they observe and hear every day.

Now when your baby finally crosses the mark of being more than a year old, there slowly arrives much more development in speech. If you still feel like that your 13 month old not talking, then there is no need to be stressed without much evidence of medical analysis. Generally, when the kid will reach the age of 13 months, the common tendency would be to try to learn more words. Naturally, they cannot learn new words every day, it takes a month to learn a few more words.

According to experts, children prefer to say and learn nouns more than other parts of a sentence. Even the questions or statements from the child would be in one word. They nod their head and say ‘Milk’ in an affirmative tone, you need to decode from that what the child actually means-in this example most probably the child feels hunger.

But there is nothing to be disappointed about if the child is not able to show the common developments in speech . It wouldn’t mean that the child is not learning. As child experts would suggest, that he or she might be still in the passive phase to acquire language, it might just mean that the passive phase is going a little longer.

The parents support in various forms

How do you put words together?

Ideally your child should start to put together words at around 2 years old. If your child does not do anything by a healthy time you should see a doctor as it may give you serious worries. They could say to you: me hungry when you want.

At the phase of around 13 months old when you are not witnessing the common speech developments there is a lot you can do as a parent to improve the child’s abilities. If the child can utter one or two words at least then you can try encouraging the child to repeat after you the simple name of objects and people. 

Try to sound as clear as possible when you are teaching the name of something to them, you can stretch out the word that does help the children to catch it at a slow pace. Do not use meaningless words around your child if you have been doing so. Repeatedly uttering words that do not make any meaning in this world might affect speech development to some extent. 

Use easy names to keep teaching them and introducing new words. In best-case scenarios, some words which you will be referring to can be found interesting by the child and they would try really hard to spell it and remember the word too. Try to include your child in several conversations. If you are sitting with your spouse and having a discussion make your child sit with you and direct some questions or opinions at the child.

Even though they wouldn’t be able to provide any input, they would feel more included in activities that involve the use of speech. It is not just about talking, listening is as important as talking from an intelligent perspective. This means you need to sit with them and listen to whatever they have to say.

It might not be words but when they will notice you paying such immense attention by making eye contact and a smile that would be a great motivation for them. This will set them on the path to try to speak more and more. This would serve as a great lesson to them which conveys that listening is very important.

Singing children’s songs which includes doing various gestures might help in speech encouragement too. Songs which will seem really fun activity would introduce them to songs, music and at the same time make them wonder how interesting and fun the musical part of speech is. Many times it is observed by experts that the children who are a bit late bloomers in speech have a great quality of using gestures.

If your child loves doing gestures to make you understand something instead of saying the exact word then it’s a good sign. Encourage them in gestures and even yourself try with gestures to reply to them. When you will copy their gestures try to say the meaning of the gesture at the same time. If you flutter your hands for example and try to imitate a bird, then put it in a sentence too for encouragement. These techniques mentioned above have shown improvements in the past and will most probably help your lovely child as well.

Knowing to read the signs by parents

Before venturing out in the world out of sheer concern about your child’s development is not a smart thing to do. For finding the reasons behind why 13 months old not talking, it is better to analyze the growth hurdles mentioned by experts. These are termed as language milestones which should be checked by the parents if they are having doubts about the child’s development in speech. This analysis includes knowing how the child communicates or tries to interact with other people around.

The other characteristics of language milestones involve knowing how much the child actually understands and how the learning is being used in the language of the child. There are some warnings present which when present in large proportions would suggest the parents take the child to a child speech expert or a pediatrician with specialization in the field. The warnings which should be noted by the parents are as follows:

• He doesn’t display wide smiles or any jolly expression when interacting with someone. This should be present within six months of age.
• If the child doesn’t make babbling sounds by the age of twelve months.
• If the child faces difficulty in persuing eye contact with adults by the age of six months.
• If the child doesn’t interact with sounds or other facial modes of expression by the age of nine months.
• Doesn’t understand the child’s own name by the age of twelve months.
• If the child doesn’t utter any clear words by the age of sixteen months.
• Not showing any kind of gestures such as pointing, waving, or reaching out by the age of twelve months.

A further indulging into child’s speech analysis

According to medically approved blogs, keeping a timeline of your speech development is useful. Many parents maintain this timeline as a referral to only note the progress in terms of vocabulary. But instead, if the child’s communicative developments and possible drawbacks are noted then it would much helpful. 

If you notice if they are mimicking sounds which they often hear then it is a positive hint. Try to notice how the vowels sound to your ears, if all the time the sound seems very off and strange then it should be taken as a warning sign. Everyone loves their child and tries to keep them in comfort in every possible way. But it is very important to analyze at a certain age if they can understand verbal commands and gestures. For example, if you ask them or hint them to pick up some object, you should observe if they can understand your conveyed perspective.

Conclusion

There are several factors to the possibility which would suggest whether your child has problem speech or not. If the parents try to analyze the past behavior and responses of the child then it would become much clearer if the child has been showing all the red flags or not. If the parents are much sure about the speech problems then consulting a pediatrician is the right move to make. They would also be able to check if the hearing abilities are in proper shape.