Verbal skills in kids....

[PrincessFiona]

I'm amazed by the differences in my kid's verbal skills. When I look back at them all when they were becoming verbal, they all seemed so vastly different.

Andrew seemed to follow the charts...Amanda was a late bloomer and then talked like a book...Alex was fairly normal in terms of the time he started talking, but he really didn't mind having the older kids talk for him. There were many, many times that I had to remind everyone to let Alex talk for himself. You had to draw the language out of him. Aidan is like a talking whirlwind...I can have entire conversations with him and even my dad said that he kept forgetting he's 2 because of his ability to talk so well.

It's amazing that all of these differences end up evening themselves out.
Have you guys noticed this in your own children with different developmental issues? Here's Aidan who has basically potty trained himself (we were even out shopping today in big boy pants with no problems) and Alex (7) is still having the occasional oops when he gets too busy playing and doesn't take the time to go.

kris

[Meenah]

My girls were complete opposites. The first was putting words together before ago one and the second barely spoke till 15 months (her sister spoke for her). They both made it into college!!!!!!!!!!!!
Luanne

[Vanquisher]

Definite difference in my two. My daughter is just doing everything faster. Everything. She is talking a mile a minute and can repeat anything you say to her. She uses sentences and has a very extensive vocab. My son on the other hadn had about 20 words he said at this age, and mostly he pointed and grunted. His language mostly came after two. To be fair to him, though, he has a prfound deafness in one ear and had to have the floor of his mouth reconstructed because he had a very severe tongue-tie. He took speech therapy for a while, but now he doesn't need it and he speaks very well, even for his age.

It does even out.

[SueC]

Definitely! My first was a precocious talker, speaking in complete and understandable sentences well before age 2. My second, was a late talker, who still makes several speech substitutions which others sometimes cannot understand (she is 4.5 ). Mitchell seems to fall in the middle, but is definitely behind a couple of the little guys in my neighborhood who are exactly the same age as him.
With each kid, I become even more amazed at how varied their personalities and development is.