did you or your child learn to talk early?

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My mom always tells me that I was talking very early. She said when I turned 1, I recieved a swing for my birthday, and when it was my nap time, I was very clear when I stood by the door and said "No, go side swing NOW"

While I do not have any children, I did speak early. I said my first word at 8 months old and was using complete sentences by 10 or 11 months.

My autistic son was delayed. When he was 3 he spoke like a 2-yearold and now at 5 he's like a 4-yearold. He's developing normal language, but with a year's delay. He has some atypicalities though, he never asks why or how, but he's beginning to grasp the context enough to be able to answer them. He can count to a couple of hundred though and knows all the letters in Swedish and English. He works much better with logic and symbols.

I wasn't delayed but I invented my own words from early on. As I got older I spoke "like a book" according to other kids. Adults just thought I was cute and brainy I guess. In a sense I did speak like a book. I always had a book with me and read old literature from early on. When immersed in 19th century literature I'd pretend that was the time and speak accordingly with my friends who thought I was very strange, so eventually I stopped

I always had a passionate relationship with language. I created my own languages, tried to learn new ones from dictionaries and walked around pretending I was in a different country and actually speaking the language. I always enjoyed languages in school.

It's still a special interest. I'm fluent in four languages and have some skills in three more and I'm attempting a career in linguistics. I have a list of languages I want to learn to master. They're like instruments to me, and every time I use them I play new tunes...

Wow, that is five replies in about 24 hours describing very early talking. Up til then, I had only come across two real people who met the criteria. So for some reason, AS really does seem to involve early talking as well as late talking.

One observation that I made is that as Elderwanda describes, the words "mum" and "dad" aren't generally the first words of early talkers. A theory that I am developing about this is that most parents are listening out for "mum" or "dad" or the cat's name, and when their babies try to say "tractor" or "sparrowhawk" or "vegetable", they don't recognise it.

It also seems to be the case that many parents don't believe babies can use words until they are a year old. When a baby says something earlier than this, the parents say it is just a sound, not a word and don't react to it. So the baby doesn't start getting positive feedback until they are a year.

I'm wondering whether some AS parents are more likely to spot patterns in their babies' babble and so give them positive feedback earlier on.

The sentence thing is absolutely fascinating. Most text books on speech development talk about the babies copying sentences they have heard, but I have come across several accounts of the early talkers composing their own sentences, like the "No. Go side swing now." example in this thread. I also hear a lot of stories of late talkers starting with composed sentences like this. My daughter did start off with sentences like "is that a vegetable?" but then reverted to the typical developmental pattern one word, then two words, then three words with only occasional complex sentences.

My mother doesn't even know if I ever started speaking words, she claimed I just started speaking sentences, and THAT was around 10-11 months!

I was in the hospital when I was about 14 months old, I had a hernia, and chatting with the nurses! I may not have been very talkative in general, but when it came to things I was interested in, or my interests, I spoke a LOT.

I talked and read at an early age. My first word was cat because the house was full of them.

I actually learned how to walk because of one cat. Apparently, one day one of the kitties walked close by and I put my weight on him and stood up. What a tolerant cat! It's no wonder that for many years, cats were my most enduring special interest.

I started to talk a little early (don't know exact age) but my words were a little unusual, starting with Duck, bear and 'Joffan' which is what I called my baby brother when I got a little older (Jonathan).

You would love our cars then! We have 3 Fiats and they are ALL damaged! Mainly dents, a broken front light/bumper and a crack on the back bumper of our biggest! The biggest car you can't even open the back slide door because it got damaged! AAAGH IRRITATING!! !

I said my first words earlier than normal, but advanced no farther until I suddenly started speaking in complete, grammatically correct sentences just after my 3rd birthday. I also started reading very early and I'm Hyperlexic.

My parents say that i spoke early. My first actual words were apparently "lordy, lordy, lordy." Someone broke a dish in the kitchen, and that's what my grandmother said when she walked in.. And i repeated it. Unlike a lot of people here, I was a little slow at first with learning to read. My first grade teacher thought that i was "slow" because of that combined with my impaired ability to socialize, low level of eye contact, etc. My parents got a tutor to work with me privately, and then after that the reading thing pretty much just clicked for me, and not long after that i was ahead of my peers with reading.. So it all worked out.

I Learning to speak pretty much fluently when I was one. I think the reason, I done so was purely on observation. Though it Probably has a-lot to do with echolalia.

I didn't talk at all until age 5 1/2. Within a few months, I was talking like any six-year-old, though with a somewhat restricted "social" vocabulary. I did much better talking about facts than talking about emotions.

i walked and talked at 10 mos.

Yeah I started talking early, and with good comprehension.

No. I learned to talk late.

My parents said i talked very early. I also had a very extensive vocabulary at an early age and talked in complete sentences rather than baby talk before age 2.

My oldest son, not aspie but dyslexic with intense special interests and ADHD traits, said his first word at 7 months old--a very clear "bye!" accompanied by a wave, so we knew he meant what he said. He was talking like a little professor by 18 months or so. My husband's cousins used to babysit him a lot at that age and would ask him detailed questions to hear him talk--he was hilarious at times.

An example from when he was about 3:

"Myriah (teenage cousin), my cat's not doing so good!"
Myriah: "Oh, that's too bad. What's wrong with it?"
DS: (very matter-of-factly) "She's dead."
Myriah: "Oooohhhh. Okay then." (I mean, really what do you do with that? No sympathy requested, just a statement of fact. )

He could be very emotional over small things, but didn't get emotional over some things that other kids would have. He was sad when the cat died, but the drama of telling people about it trumped his own emotions over the event.

My daughter, Tourette's--not diagnosed aspie but with many aspie characteristics--talked between 12 and 18 months of age but verbalized in a style my grandmother referred to as "talking mush." DD would babble on and on with what seemed to us to be nonsensical words, but they meant something to her. She would get very offended at times when the rest of us couldn't understand her. When we would shake our heads in bafflement, she would repeat the same nonsensical words, getting more aggravated until she made herself understood or gave up. She was past 2 yrs old when she finally became intelligible to the rest of the world. She is now in a gifted program at school and tested in the 99.9% percentile for verbal proficiency for her age when tested for the program.

My DS who is diagnosed aspie talked at about 2 yrs of age. Later than my other two but i chalked it up to not having to talk--his brother and sister talked so much he could not get a word in edgewise. He talks well now, with a slight lisp which he is outgrowing--and is very obviously of the aspie-monologue style of speech.

None of my kids did the baby talk thing. It was complete sentences almost from the beginning.

I babbled a lot by 12 months, but I said my first actual word at 14 months, which was ''teddy'', then I started saying other words like ''mummy'' and ''daddy''. And no, having your very first word a word that isn't ''mummy'' or ''daddy'' isn't an Aspie/Autistic thing in babies. I often heard of babies having their first word as things like ''dummy'' (dummy is ''pacifier'' in the UK), or ''cat'' or something like that.

So I was about average with speaking. I wasn't too early or too delayed.