speech again

[MIRIAMMUM]

Thank you for your reply regarding my sons speech development. I suppose when I advised you what he was doing ,it was largely in the area of expressive speech which I am now happy about. I was just wondering about receptive speech. Again, I know I shouldnt compare but my nephew seems to understand longer more detailed conversations . My son understood simple commands and things like "Where are your toes" at the correct age.He can now follow 2 and 3 part directions such as "pick the cup up from the floor, put it in the sink and then put the ball back in the box",(well when he wants to and doesnt get distracted by something else on the way, although if you give him a look he recalls what he was meant to do) understand concepts like " I think", "maybe", "it might be" (not sure if these are receptive), has a large vocabulary, knows what things are used for, understands questions like "What do you do when you are hungry?, has a very good memory. Is it usual, that when a child has good age appropriate expressive speech that they also have age appropriate receptive speech. I think he is just a bit impulsive and doesnt reflect on peoples conversations as much as my nephew but was a bit worried that the fact that he doesnt actually have as long conversations himself that this could be linked to recpetive rather than expressive speech. probably worrying about nothing as usual.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

You really are worrying too much. Receptive and expressive speech abilities do not always parallel each other, though they usually do. I really think that you are not witnessing any problem and are seeing simply the normal differences along the normal spectrum that exist with any two children of the same age whom you might observe.