Hi, I am a bilingual mom and have a 16 months old girl who doesn’t speak many words yet. She used to say “hi” and “bye” in both language and “mom”, “dad” and “this” in my language when she turned one. I only started to get alarmed about her language skills after her 15 months check up when the nursed asked how many words does she speak now. I said 5, but after the check up I realize she has not been saying these words for the past months with exception of “mom” and “dad”.
I started labeling words and asked her to point and repeat the words few weeks ago. She didn’t want to look at me or repeat the words I said, but she did point to the right body parts and animals, when asked. Of some of the words she did repeat, it was very unintelligible. She should say, “ooooo” for both ball and nose. “ooo-ooo” for balloon, “moo” for cow sound. Not so clear.. But then after a week, she has forgotten most of them and just gives a grunting sound when I ask what something is.
One thing I want to ask is that, as I’m bilingual I have been using “both” English and my language when I talk to her. I usually just talk in my language, but when I do use both, I would use full sentence in one and then say it again in the other. We were going to use One parent One language technique with her initially, but then my husband (who only speaks in English) for the past 16 months have been using exclamation (wow, huh, ha, uh’s), or babbling sounds while running around and playing with her, no matter how many times I’ll tell him to just speak to her. And as I wanted to reinforce English in some of the dvds I’ve been showing her (Your baby can read) I ended up saying both language to her,
But now I’m wondering if that has done more harm than good. I have most recently noticed she didn’t know most of the words we chose to work on her, so once she learned it specifically, she was able to say it to some degree. But now for some reason she has stopped saying it again. Do you think I’m confusing her by putting two words into a same object?
How did you kids started saying words? Did they get confused with saying two things for the same objects? Were they always good at repeating what you say. Am I making her more confused by speaking two languages to her by myself? Should I only pick one language when labeling an object to her. Was there ever a period when they stopped saying it, or forgot the words they once knew?
I would really appreciate your experiences. Thanks in advance.
