2.5 year old son, refuses to speak, potty train...

[Aussie Barb]

Hi Jsingh
I'm a speech pathologist and have been working with kids' speech & language for 30 years. Probably, as everyone has said just leave the potty training for now. You're right, it is harder to train when they don't have the language to support this big step in development. Boys do tend to start talking more slowly than girls, but there is still a range for our expectations. By 30 months he should be using quite a few single words, mostly the names of things eg cup, drink, biscuit etc (useful objects that he sees & hears you say a lot). They need about 30 single words before they can go onto the next exciting step of putting little sentences together eg 'more drink', 'go car' etc. Try to reduce the length of your sentences to him so that he has only something small to copy eg maybe dont say "Let's go to the kitchen and get you a drink, you look hot." but rather say, 'get drink' or 'drink'. It would be a good idea to get his hearing checked too. There is usually no problem here, but to miss it would be unwise. A speech pathologist can assess his understanding and expression and be more specific with help after he/she has done an assessment too. I hope this helps.
Let us know how you get on.

 

[MomoJA]

I'm sorry if this has already been suggested. My computer is really slow, and so I've only looked at the first couple of pages of answers, but as for the speaking, have you tried using sign language?

I thought my child was going to be langauge delayed because we were living abroad and my husband and I speak different languages. That meant she was going to be exposed to three different languages. I knew that if she were delayed, there would be a stage that would be very frustrating for her during which she would know what she wanted to say but not how to say it, so I used sign langauge with her. Just simple things like hot, cold, eat, drink, wet, more, etc.

She started speaking at about 9 months (though I didn't realize it at first because she was speaking a language I don't speak, and with a baby accent). Anyway, all the words she said she could either sign or were things she could point to or do. I really attribute her early speech to signing. It helped her grasp the concept, sort of like that amazing scene in the Miracle Worker, that sounds/signs represented things she already knew.