Teenage boy not talking

I used to call it the 'duvet' years. You wait it out and then they emerge as young adults. X

Deedaa

Absolutely normal I would have said. I'm sure I once heard someone explaining that, because of the way the brain develops, teenage boys really do become almost incapable of speech. Once the brain has matured a bit more they turn back into human beings.
As far as his father is concerned - this sort of crass jokiness is their idea of conversation and he probably thinks he's being hysterically funny.

thanks to everyone on this thread. i literally have been worried tha tmy son had some sort of neurological condition or developmental problem. i was trying really hard to get him to say sentences and although i have of course seen kevin and heard this before i had kind of forgotten about it. so its really good to know that it upsets other people and has worried other people but that it is normal. i can realx now and stop trying to get him to form setnences as if i was trying to get somone to use their broken arm .....i was thinking oh my god does he need speech therapy does he have huge anxiety issues or a kind of stutter or is he depressed or something but afraid to talk about it because it is just such a perosnality change and its so extreme. i really ahd no idea. kevin is a veritable chatterbox compared to my son. but he doesnt lock himself away in his room. he does hang out with us and ive been terribly hard on him because i thought there was somethinge lse going on. now it all makes so much sense and i can get my head around it that its just a phase and its all gonna be ok in the end and there isnt somethign wrong with his brain.
thank goodness for the internet.

Personally, I would be far more offended by your ill-mannered S or is it Si? his father makes some jokey (or hurtful) remark about our lifestyle

If he was my son, he would soon be told how ill mannered his behaviour is and to stop it forthwith. I am sure I would find a way to squelch him as well. A long cold Paddington stare often works.

This thread is eight years old 'Kevin' will now be in his 20s

Don't take it personally. It's normal. My 12 year old stepson has three sounds. The first is a sort of guttural grunt which is his main form of communication. It means yes, no, good, ok etc. Then there is a sort of cry of pain. That means he's just lost or been killed in a game. The final one is a heavy sigh which is used when me or his dad crack a joke.

He is capable of speech as we can, at times, force a conversation out of him by insisting he speaks or he wants to tell us about something he's seen or learned online.

If boys are like girls then he'll become a human being again when he's 18.

Well it would be interesting to know how he turned out!

Riverwalk

This thread is eight years old 'Kevin' will now be in his 20s

I was just wondering how all the Kevins mentioned on here are doing now, Riverwalk.

Meantime, DD has just discovered that she has a Kevin.

Vampirequeen, I laughed my head off at your first paragraph. My 14-year-old GS is exactly as you describe. The only thing that sparks a conversation is if it's about technology, shooting games or fast car chases on TV. I've spent most of his life teaching him about the natural world. I just hope it all comes back to him again when he's older.

I think it is rather common for adolescent boys to go through a stage where they speak a variant of language known as Caveman Grunt. Fortunately, their linguistic skills improve subsequently in most cases.

What is he interested in that you can talk about? Football? Music? Playing an instrument? Can you take him to football? At 14 he can go on his own, so an away match? London?
As a retired secondary school teacher, I promise 14yo boys often are uncommunicative.