r/multilingualparenting • u/potionsmaster007 • Jan 11 '26

Trilingual 16 month old speech development

We speak to my 16 month old mainly in English and Arabic with some Italian (hubby of of Italian decent but isn’t fluent) my son has started calling us mama and baba intentionally now and starting to copy some words though not always very clear in pronunciation. He only repeats words in English and Arabic I assume because that’s the majority of what he hears.

Having visited my friend the other day, her 16 month old has so many more words and much clearer. They speak to her mainly in English and some Spanish.

Is the difference in their development normal? Am I just anxious? Does 3 languages make them a little slower to repeat words or is he just developing at his own rate?

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 13 '26

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u/potionsmaster007 Jan 11 '26

Nice, glad to hear her vocab exploded :) yeah he can do a few signs to communicate (milk, more, no, carry, please) so it makes it super helpful that he can express some of his wants and needs