Puzzling him out.

That's what I'm trying to do. Puzzle out his speech, in more ways than one. First, I'm just trying to puzzle out what he means. We spend a lot of time on this because it's not that he doesn't talk- he talks all the time (and I mean all the time;) but most of it is nonsensical to us. We're pretty decent at figuring out toddler speak, too, so I don't think he's actually trying to speak English most of the time. Doesn't stop him from trying to get his point across, though. I feel bad when I can't figure it out- good thing he's such a relatively easygoing guy. The second part is trying to puzzle out exactly what his delay is. He doesn't seem to me to have cognitive delays. I'm sure it's not his hearing because he and I have a little game now where I hum a short tune and he hums it back- I've done this a lot and tried doing it very quietly and he gets it every time- pretty musical, I guess! Ask him to repeat a word though, and it's usually not even an approximation. For example, the last word I tried out on him was "funny". He offered "sha-pus". Not "unny", not "fun", not even "ny". "Sha pus". Which is not to say he doesn't pick up any words or parts of words, but it's pretty slow going. I know the gap between his thoughts and my understanding is frustrating for him sometimes (for example, naptime), so I hope maybe some speech therapy will help.