Its a matter of speech.

[Gander]

Kal is now 3 and has delayed speech. Both myself and Molly try really hard to keep adding to his vocabulary. It always seems that he adds words when we least expect it. The other day he said "bark" whilst picking up some bark at the playground. I found it funny that although he would have heard us talking about it when he was picking it up, it wasn't a word that we have been trying to get him to say on a regular basis. What is great though that he has an awesome ability to communicate without words. We have taught him basic sign language but he tells us stop by pushing things away and more by being actively excited. I can't wait to see what comes out his mouth next. Both Molly and myself now suddenly realise that we can't swear as much otherwise its going to start coming out of his mouth when we least expect it.

[catsanchez]

Danny has been dealing with a speech delay, possibly due to the fact we found he has a permanently enlarged tonsil obstructing 50% of his throat. Something I found useful was to put a bunch of pictures together on a paper and put it on the fridge/a cupboard etc at toddler height so he could reach and point to what he wanted. Before he could talk to us about food, we put a page on the fridge that had things like peanut butter, orange juice, biscuits etc. So he would point to it and I wpuld repeat what it was and he would feel good about himself because he "told" us. Boosting his confidence made him excited to want to be able to learn whereas before he just wasn't even trying.