If you think your child may be a late talk­er, it’s nev­er too ear­ly to seek help. We know that the ear­li­er we start to help our kids, the bet­ter their out­comes.

And always remem­ber that ear­ly inter­ven­tion in speech dis­or­ders is key to long-term suc­cess!

1- Don’t Wait it Out

Some par­ents hear that late-talk­ing can be a stage and decide to take the “wait and see” approach. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, if their kid is one of the 30–40% fac­ing devel­op­men­tal delays, they may miss out on the appro­pri­ate treat­ment dur­ing the appro­pri­ate time.

If a child isn’t speak­ing at 18 months, par­ents should go to their Fam­i­ly Doc­tor or Pedi­a­tri­cian for a hear­ing exam and rule out any phys­i­cal caus­es. And from here, the child needs to be eval­u­at­ed by a speech pathol­o­gist.

2- The Earlier therapy.. the Better Result!

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Stud­ies state that most late-talk­ers catch up to their peers by age 5 or 6.

In par­tic­u­lar, late-talk­ers seem to strug­gle with gram­mar, spelling, class­room dis­cus­sion, and at times with read­ing com­pre­hen­sion.

By work­ing with late-talk­ers ear­ly on, you can improve their lan­guage skills and long-term lan­guage-based out­comes.

3- Be Patient on a confirmed Diagnosis

Let us face that diag­nos­ing late-talk­ers can be dif­fi­cult. They

are well known for refus­ing to do things that don’t inter­est them. There­fore experts rec­om­mend reg­u­lar­ly re-eval­u­at­ing to dis­cov­er the child’s actu­al abil­i­ty.

Though you need to be patient to have a con­firmed diag­no­sis for a late talk­er.

Experts in late-talk­ing agree, though, that it’s worth tak­ing the road to diag­no­sis slow­ly; a false diag­no­sis can be worse than no diag­no­sis.

4- Your Time with your Kid is Precious

Your time with a child can be lim­it­ed by many things: fam­i­ly avail­abil­i­ty, finances, and oth­er per­son­al caus­es.

Par­ents need to remain patient as they work with their tod­dlers on lan­guage devel­op­ment. You may notice that your kid is busy work­ing on his/her motor skills, and maybe lan­guage has tak­en a sec­ond pri­or­i­ty. Many times some motor skills are learned quick­ly, while oth­ers take a lit­tle more time. Show­er your late talk­er with praise and love for lit­tle lan­guage achieve­ment and keep the learn­ing fun!

In the mean­time, to pro­mote your kid’s lan­guage skills, label any sounds he/she uses for words. For exam­ple, if he/she says “Ca” for “Car,” you should say, “Yes, that’s a car.” Con­tin­ue to talk and sing to him/her, ask him/her ques­tions, point out and iden­ti­fy the peo­ple and things that fill his/her world, and read togeth­er with try­ing to slow down and make sure your tod­dler is watch­ing you as you speak.