As two studies by psychology researchers at Georgia State University show, gestures, such as pointing or waving, are linked to a child’s first words.
However, in this sense, the twins lag behind the rest of the children in the production and use of these gestures .
Work doubles
Research has thus found that a delay in gesture can reliably predict a delay in speech. At the same time, many gestures suggest that speech is on the way. Parents can help accelerate their children’s language acquisition by naming the objects they point to .
And the delay in the twins’ gestures? It may be due to less parental involvement, since the parents of the rest of the children used a greater number and diversity of gestures than the parents of twins. Parents caring for twins are likely to have shorter conversations with their children, even less gestures, because their attention is divided and their work is doubled .
Girls ages 2 to 3 also produce longer and more complex sentences than boys . Twins are initially at a disadvantage when it comes to language, as they use fewer words than their counterparts and form complete sentences later. Boys are the furthest behind, and girl-girl twins develop broader vocabularies and more complex sentences than boy-boy twins of comparable age.
Most of the time, these delays are within the normal range of differences and there is nothing to worry about . Almost all children will catch up around the age of three and a half.