talking at 14 1/2 months

Nope not at all. If she understands and can follow instructions then she is doing great. My oldest hardly said anything at all until he was two and then he suddenly had a big burst of language and now at 3.5 I can't shut him up.

No need to worry at all.
Maybe she is learning other stuff at the moment, and talking is a low priority. Maybe get her hearing checked though, any ear infections, glue ear?

DS1 didn't say Mumma until he was 2, and is now talking so much I wish he were quieter!

Cole88 IMO she sounds just fine at the mo! I'm a speech language therapist, and I work with preschoolers, so to give you a rough idea of the norms (which I copied from one of my previous posts as couldn't be bothered retyping it)....

around 12 months first words start to appear. They understand names of familiar objects/people and some simple instructions.

around 18- 24 months they reach 50-60 word vocab and start combining words to make two word phrases.They are able to follow simple instructions and understand simple questions (i.e. give me teddy, where is the cat?, push the car). Their speech is 25% intelligible to strangers.

24-36 months - phrases of 2-4 words. Vocab of 150-300 words. They understand 2 step instructions (e.g. get your bag and put it in your room). Their understanding of concepts is improving (e.g. on/under, hot/cold, heavy, big/small, high/low, stop/go, slow/fast etc). Their speech is 50-75% intelligible to strangers.

36-48 months - length of phrases increase - 4+ words, They show understanding of questions, who, where, what etc...Their speech is 90% intelligible to strangers.

48 -60 months- complex intelligible sentences...

These are the averages based on normative data but the range is huge and up to six months either way is considered within the normal range. Therefore a child who is 2 could still be using single words or more complex phrases and still considered within the normal range... HTH

Edited by freckle

Sounds all good to me.
DS can pick a word of the day, or hour and everything is that word for a while. Then there are words like 'cracker' which I remember him saying and associated with a cracker well over a month before I heard it again.
Then just in the last couple of weeks he seems to come home (daycare baby) with a new word everyday, most of which I haven't head again. You try and get him to repeat a word, and he looks at you like you're just crazy.
I'm sure he'll pick it up in his own time.

Sheza - the main thing before three is that they are understanding and attempting lots of words, even if they don't sound exactly like the adult version. So if he's starting to make small phases that's great! Young children use many processes in their speech to simplify the production, some of which are very common, (like reducing consonant clusters e.g. star >da, fronting sounds like cat > dat, stopping sounds like sun >dun, deleting final consonants etc...) many of these processes resolve somewhere between 3-4 for most kids (although some do persist a little longer). So it is typical for children in this age to still exhibit lots of sounds substitutions and omissions which can significantly impact on their intelligibility. Intervention targeting speech production (rather than language) has been shown to have limited effectiveness in children below 3-3;6 for most types of speech difficulties so it's great that your getting him assessed and that still gives him heaps of time to improve his speech production before intervention would be required (which the majority of children do!) ... Also it's good to rule out any other possible contributing factors at this age... Good Luck! and I hope that makes sense, cos I'm a little brain dead at the mo

My Paft teacher got me slightly worried as when DS was 18 months she said he should have 50-60 words and be starting to combine words...I said he doesn't and she started talking about speech therapy :/

She didn't mention the 6months range so thanks Freckle :)

To the OP I definitely wouldn't worry yet, she sounds like she is doing really well. DS has only now just started really talking and he is almost 2.

Edited by kellie

Have you seen a list of what sounds come when? We were given a sheet with different sounds and letters and when babies/children can pronounce them, etc. So talking gibberish or saying words slightly wrong is normal, we were told if they say dat instead of cat you just say 'yes cat good girl/boy' and they'll eventually be able to say it properly.

Don't know if that helps anyone or not but thought I'd share...