4 Year Old Son Development

[sec1982]

I have a four year old happy son.  He reached all his milestones right on track.  He crawled around 7 months, he walked around 14 months.  He spoke his first words (mama, baba, etc) at around 11 months.  He started telling his wants and needs around 18 months to two years old.  He potty trained at 3 , but he does have the occasional accident at night. He stays with my mom while I work and is hardley every around children.  So when he does get around kids he gets so excited and energetic.  I am worried about his social skills.  He will have a conversation only if you intiate the conversation.  He every once in a while will start a conversation on his own.  I just don't think conversationally he is up to par for a four year old.  I am thinking of putting him in speech therapy to see if this will help his social and conversating skills.  If you ask him questions, most of the time he can answer you.  I am just worried and want him to do well in school when he starts in August 2010.  Do you think speech therapy will benefit him?  

[sec1982]

thank you all so much for your advice.  i am going to enroll him in to part time day care to start off with and see how that goes.  we took him to the zoo this weekend and he was so into the reptile exhibit.  he was going to each reptile and telling me what it was and that it looked mad or happy or if it was sleeping or walking.  i think that i do worry about him too much.  it's just that it seems like schools and doctors are so fast to say a child is ADHD or in the autism spectrum and i read all this stuff online and get worried.  my son's grandma on his dad's side mentioned to me that one of my son's cousin ( a girl that is about a year younger than my son and has been in day care since she was an infant) talked so much better than my son and that I needed to get him checked.  i tried not to let it bother me, but it did.  i know that you can't compare children and that they all develop in their own way.  it just hurt my feelings and made me think that somehting was wrong.

I thank all of you again for taking the time to give me your advice.

[supermomma531]

I would get him more involved in playing with other children. You said he gets so excited when around other children. Maybe he is bored and just has nothing to do or say. He needs to have a couple of interests like maybe sports or legos or building something. Maybe see if he's into nature, maybe a specific animal or objects like airplanes or something. He definitely sounds like he'd enjoy more time to play with children his age. What does he like/enjoy? Once he starts to interact more with other children, he will start to talk more especially if he has something exciting to talk about! Good Luck.

[Sandman2]

A good answer by Aid821.  I was just going to say "relax, he's a boy"  My son is now 25, a very good student/athlete and college grad and he still doesn't say a lot.  Unless we start talking sports - so my only advice would be to try and find what he is interested in and use that.  It only took me mucho years to figure that one out.

[aid821]

I don't believe speech therapy is necessary for him, he may just be a quieter type of child who takes in alot from his environment, which isn't such a bad thing. For now, just do as you would normally and keep communicating with him. Encourage him to communicate with others aswell, which i'm sure you already do. I myself was a real quiet kid and wouldn't speak to anyone and was extremely shy, i just wanted to do my own thing and was happy to do so. Unless he does have some problems with his actual speech, then i feel it would be neccesary to take him. True story, i have a friend who had a speech problem and couldn't talk until the age of almost 5, he is now 27 and is one of the most talkative guys i know (in fact sometimes he talks too much!!).