Parents of bilingual toddlers and/or late talkers

[crimsonandclover]

My DD1 is now 2.5. She just had her word explosion a few months ago. She would say words, but not really sentences. All of a sudden in November, it was a literal explosion and she started repeating everything. We're a bilingual home. My pedi said it's not unusual for bilingual kids to have a bit of a speech delay. If you think your LO's receptive skills are good (DD1's were excellent), and if he's communicating with you (DD1 could communicate by pointing, making specific sounds that we recognized, doing specific signs that she had made up herself, etc), then I would just wait it out if you have the patience. Otherwise it wouldn't hurt to get him checked out. It can definitely be normal, though.

[maybebaby]

Not bilingual, but DS is 22 m and has a bit of a speech delay. At his 18m appt, he only said uh-oh and cat consistently. Our pedi was not terribly concerned, but gave us the option of speech therapy. His point was that it wouldn't hurt, and though he may (likely) have a language explosion before 2 on his own, he may not. And then we would have missed out on several months of speech. DS was getting a little frustrated with stuff, but mainly would grab our hand and take us to whatever object he wanted to play with/eat/etc. Since we were able, we started weekly speech. So far we haven't seen much improvement in expressive speech, but his receptive language (which I didn't think he was delayed on) has really improved. he also is starting to pick up on more signs, and is mimicking us more.

So basically, we went the early speech therapy route, and while I think it's a good thing because it teaches us some techniques to do with DS, I don't think it would have harmed him to wait. I just wanted to be proactive, even though we aren't really worried. I would just bring up to your pedi and get his recommendations.

[chia]

My trilingual nephew spoke gobbledygook for like a year, between 12-24 mo.
Now, he's 2.5, and can be understood clearly in all 3 languages (English, French, Hungarian). And, is able to modulate between languages appropriately (for the most part), depending on who he's talking to.

Sent from my SPH-L900 using proboards

[fromage]

My kiddo is 2.5 and bilingual in French and English (and I'm an SLP in a very linguistically diverse community). 

Throughout DS's first 2 years, he was fairly consistently behind his peers (same as your case, mostly girls) in expressive language development. At 12 months, he had 2 words ("yes" and "ca"). At 18 months, he had about 6 or 7 words. So, similar to your DS. He didn't have a lot of words, but he was right at the minimum "within normal limits" for his age. He always demonstrated good receptive language skills, so I wasn't really worried. We did incorporate signs, and he used and understood many of them. I definitely felt that they were helpful to bridge the gap. 

By 24 months he was using 3-4 word phrases and he's had a few other language explosions since then. Now, at 2.5, he's carrying on in long conversations in both languages. His imaginative play has taken off, and he's making up intricate stories. 

I'm not saying that I wouldn't check in with an SLP if you're concerned. @tokenhoser brought up a good point about hearing loss being a potential issue that is sometimes missed in little ones. I will say, though, that appearing to have a bit of an expressive language delay is typical in bilingual children. 

[pescalita]

Not bilingual, and I'm admittedly a wait-and-see person, but that sounds exactly like my son at 19m. By 21 he had had a small word explosion and was really understanding a ton and following directions. Now at 25m I can understand most of what he says and he puts together 2-3 word sentences.