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I just had my daughter's 18 month checkup and the questionnaire asked if she could speak 6 words or more. The doctor said words that only I understand count and that at this point only about 10-25% of what a kid says is intelligible. I was worried that my daughter doesn't have many words that others can understand but she said it was fine. Make sure to bring up your concerns, they may refer you for a speech assessment which will give you some good info.

My son was like this at his age too, and "this!" was definitely a favorite word. It was incredibly frustrating hearing nothing but "this?" all day, but he had a language explosion sometime around two and is doing great now. We had an EI evaluation around that time, but before his talking really took off - who knew? He qualified and is still getting speech therapy once a week, but in hindsight he would have been fine without it, he just needed time.

My LO is 17 months and only says Dada, bye, that. We are starting the EI process soon.

@MCD919: I would go ahead and get an EI evaluation. It can only help.

My son is delayed in OT, PT and speech but his receptive language is excellent. Speech therapy is really helping

My guess is that they'll want to do an early intervention evaluation, and hell probably qualify for some in-home help. Your county might even have some playgroups or something that they recommend, because getting him out and around other little ones is definitely helpful. My 2 year old started getting EI help around that age, and it's really not a big deal. At that age they typically won't do real speech therapy (unless it was an extreme thing where he just wasn't making sounds at all.) At first they said at age 2 they would start speech therapy if he hadn't improved, now they're saying it's been pushed back even further plus he is showing some improvement, so they're waiting until 2 1/2.

I agree with everyone else about language exploding at 2. I also got my son tested around that age but he didn't qualify. I think ~20 months he had close to 100 words. Then close to ~2 he had close to 200 words and now at 28 months he's makes 4-5 word sentences. It doesn't hurt to get tested though but your LO might just be a late talker like my DS. My ds said mama then stopped saying it for months when I was home for summer break, sure enough when I went back to work he started saying it. It was kind of like well why do I need to call her, she's always here. LOL. Our pedi also mentioned that kids with very responsive (I can't think of the exact word she used) parents talk later because they're already getting everything they want.

For what it's worth, my LO had his 18 month appointment today (but he's almost 19 months) and his pediatrician only asked if he had 3 words and understood most of what we told him. He said he doesn't bother with testing or referrals until age 2, especially for babies not in daycare.

At 18 months, my son had 3-4 words, two of which were 'moo' and 'bah' so yours is ahead of where mine was at that point. Our pediatrician was not super concerned but if in another few months he didn't improve, to let her know and we'd do an evaluation. Never needed it, now at 25 months he has plenty of words and is totally caught up! I wouldn't stress it, I bet your LO does similarly!

@MCD919: I actually didn't know about them either until our pedi suggested them since I expressed my concern of his lack of words with her early on ~12 months. here are the ones we have. I know I went a bit overboard but Im a teacher and we have books galore!!! Luckily I think my ds is a bookworm. I think they'll really help your LO too. I really love that they were real life pictures and not drawings/cartoonish.

@MCD919: So this is a little removed, but my little brother was taken for evaluation at 2 yrs 9 months because he had about 10 words. This was 30 years ago, way before EI or the level of concern we have now. My parents forged ahead and kept him in public school (non-special ed) - and he just graduated with his PhD from an Ivy League school and works for Google. Soo that's a success story in my book

Does your LO get exposure to a second language? Some kids take longer to process 2 languages at the same time...

@iluvboba637: @MCD919: these books have been GREAT for my son learning words!! He loved the 100 Trucks book forever and has branched into the others. Before he was talking a lot we asked him to point to all of the different things which he did, then he could start saying them all.

Also - my son didn't have many words at 18 months at all, we got him evaluated recently and he tested fine, and then at 2.5 he started talking a TON and in sentences all of a sudden.