First words or just jabbering

N’s now 14 1/2 months old and although he’s very chatty, we still haven’t got any specific discernable words…well, I don’t think we have!

I think he’s a bit more of a physical type: he was an early sitter at just 4 months; crawled at 8 months (after 2 months of being on all fours and rocking, then going backwards); as soon as he was pulling himself up he was practising sitting straight back down (very handy as it meant we didn’t have him standing in his cot then crying because he couldn’t get down again); and walking at 11 months.  So, I’m thinking although he’s always been a noisy chatterbox making noises and chuntering on to himself, it’s going to be a while before we get any words that we can recognise.

I’m not too worried when I hear about lots of his online buddies talking and having around 10 words already, because my mum says that both my brother & I didn’t start talking until  18 months when we went straight to sentences, so I’d imagine N will be similar.

The nearest we’ve got to words is pointing to the sheep in the field and saying ‘ssssss’, and the last couple of days we’ve had ‘baba’.  Not convinced that’s ‘baa’ as he keeps saying it to various things (not all animals), but it could be his version of sheep baaing.  It’s just typical that his first ‘words’ (apart from mama and dad – think we’ve had those when referring to us, although can’t be sure they were in context) are to do with the farm, although not really surprising given that farming words and items are always pointed out to him regularly.

It does astound me how parents know what their child is saying.  N points to things, but each time he’s jabbering, it’s a different sound.  Luckily I generally know what he wants from his actions, so it doesn’t really matter that I have no idea what he’s trying to say.  But I’m convinced that his 3 year old cousin he spends lots of time with, is teaching him toddler code words and it’ll be ages before we work out what he’s talking about.