My friend's son is two years and five months. He seems to be understanding well for his age; he will generally follow simple instructions eg, put the socks and t-shirt in your cupboard. However, he hardly speaks at all; apart from a few single words he just points or nods. She is worried that this is not usual for children of this age.

Hi Louise,

Yes, although some children are slow to develop speech, you would expect the child of 2;5 years to have quite a few words in their vocabulary and probably putting a few 2-words combinations together. However, the boy is still very young and I wouldn't want to set any alarm bells ringing just yet.

On the positive side, he is using some single words and he seems to be understanding language. Understanding will generally develop a lot quicker than expressive language so he probably understands many more words than he can speak.

My initial thought would be to get his hearing checked. Even if his parents think it is fine, he could have fluctuating hearing loss caused by Otitis Media (Glue Ear). If this is the case his speech is likely to be delayed.

I would also make sure that his parents try and restrict the use of a dummy/pacifier, and not let him watch TV.

Play is one of the best ways to naturally develop speech and language skills. His parents should be playing with him, talking to him, reading books and singing songs with him as much as possible. During play, let him take the lead and just feed language into the play. Take a look at the Download Section of our website to find a host of free PDF downloads giving you all sorts of information, ideas and activities to help develop speech and language skills.

If anyone else has ideas or games to help develop children's speech and language please get in touch with us or post the information on the forum. We hope to have the Users Area developed soon where users can post their own ideas and activities.

Regards Icommunicate webteam.

Thank you for the link and for the advise, I told my friend about your advise and they have taken him to get his ears checked (although I am not sure what the results were).

She tells me that her son's speech is improving, although gradually. He tends not to talk so much when people other than his parents are present, although this is probably just attributed to shyness.