How many words should a 17 month old be saying?
My daughter was the same way at that age. She also understood and followed multi task directions but she just didn’t talk. I had her evaluated by Early Intervention and she qualified for free speech services. Early Intervention is a great state run service that will come to your home and provide therapy if your child presents with a delay. My daughter is now 2 1/2 and just actually had her last session today. She is now talking up a storm! The other thing I would recommend is signing with her. I was always on the fence about this because I thought if you taught a child to sign it would delay their speech even more but I found it was just the opposite with my daughter. As soon as we gave her the signs the words just started coming out of her mouth. There are a ton of websites that show you the signs for words. We just did the simple ones like more, cookie, eat, milk,sleep, etc but it made a huge difference and also elleviated some of her frustration when trying to communicate.
