At 18 months it is somewhat unusual for a child to only use 5 words. By 24 months a child should be using at least 50 words. Does he use other forms of communication such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, pointing, grunting, etc? An evaluation by a certified speech language pathologist is warranted at this point. This can be obtained from your local Early Childhood Intervention services, or from a private practice speech language pathologist. Check the American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA) Web site.
Here are some guidelines from the ASHA web site for 1-2 years of age:
* Says more words every month.
* Uses some one- or two- word questions ("Where kitty?" "Go bye-bye?" "What's that?").
* Puts two words together ("more cookie," "no juice," "mommy book").
* Uses many different consonant sounds at the beginning of words.
Source(s):
http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/12.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Childhood_Intervention

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