My almost 4yo speaks but barely talks
We’re already scheduled for a speech therapy evaluation, but I was wondering if anyone else has gone through this, as it feels like I’m the only one around with a non-talkative toddler. Sorry if it’s a bit rambly. Mostly rehearsing what I’ll tell the speech therapist.
To be clear, we can *communicate* just fine. She lets me know when she needs something, loves to play and hang out, and will happily complete tasks like putting away her books, getting dressed, etc. But she uses the absolute minimum necessary amount of words to get her point across, despite both of us parents modeling typical speech patterns. Sometimes we’ll be like “can you say \[full sentence\]” and she’ll get annoyed and go “No.” politely but firmly haha.
We run into other kids her age and younger at the park and they’re all asking their parents a million questions about everything. But our kid has never in her life asked a “why” question. In fact, she barely asks any questions. If she sees something new she just gives her best guess and then waits for us to either confirm it or correct her (she saw a horseshoe crab at the aquarium and went “it’s a doggy!”; she now calls it a horseshoe crab, so it’s not that she can’t say words well). She just recently started putting “more” in front of her requests for food, so she used to just ask for “broccoli” but now if it runs out and she wants more she’ll say “more broccoli?”
I read her so many books I have to cut her off at times and insist she watch some TV instead. Have you ever heard of having to *make* a toddler watch TV? Even the shows she loves like Between the Lions, Bluey, and Big Comfy Couch get boring for her quickly. She has a ton of books that are absolutely irreplaceable and she will often request a specific one we haven’t read in a while, without it being in front of her, so she’s got a great memory. She often recites her books from memory on car rides or during bedtime, but when we try and engage her in conversation and introduce new sentences it’s a very slow process; she’ll get frustrated and run away to go do something else if she feels like we’re pressuring her into saying something specific. Unless it’s a game of some kind, or we’re quoting her books back to her.
She used to be terrified of people of all ages, and now she’s a lot more relaxed around strangers, but she still won’t talk to them. She’ll talk to cats and dogs, though lol. She’s also been really into pointing out the colors of things she sees, as well as imagining different colored objects: “blue ducky, purple ducky, green ducky…” (she has no books with those in them so she has to just be picturing those in her head). She’s getting good at identifying general conditions (it’s very loud, it’s too hot, it’s very dark, etc) and if she sees another kid crying she’ll go “they’re sad” or “poor baby.”
She absolutely cannot describe things in the past tense, which is what makes us most nervous. If we go to the library and later talk about how we went to the library, she’ll start putting her shoes on to go back to the library. If she were out of our sight and something happened to her the best she could do is cry about it, not describe it, which of course doesn’t bode well for someone going into preschool/kindergarten soon (she’s starting preschool this fall, she didn’t get in anywhere last year).
Part of me worries I’ll have to put my foot down and be “mean” for a while and pretend I can’t understand her until she says things fully. I’m hoping speech therapy helps enough so I won’t have to do that. Also I have some traumatic experiences in my childhood around being forced to sink-or-swim in social situations, so I’m really inclined to just let her learn at her own pace. Homeschooling is an option; we technically don’t *have* to put her in school, and we know plenty of friends with kids her age that would help her socialize.
Idk I’m just wondering who else has been through this and how they handled it