If your child is over two years old, you should have your pediatrician evaluate them and refer them for speech therapy and a hearing exam if they can only imitate speech or actions but don't produce words or phrases by themselves, they say only certain words and only those words repeatedly, they cannot follow simple ...
70-80% of late talkers will catch up (Whitehouse et. al, 2011). “Late talker” refers to a little one younger than 30 months old who is meeting milestones in other domains, including understanding of language, just not in expressive communication. But unfortunately, that does mean that 20-30% will continue to struggle.
A toddler between 18 and 30 months old who isn't speaking much or at all but is otherwise developing normally may be considered a late talker. It's estimated that up to 17.5 percent of kids up to age 3 who take longer may have a speech or language delay.
Children who present as late talkers tend to catch up to their peers by the ages of 3-5 years old, but could be at risk for developing later language or literacy difficulties, or even mental health needs.
According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), late talkers are toddlers (18 to 30 months old) who have a limited vocabulary for their age, but do not have any other developmental delays. Some late talkers may talk by three to five years of age. These toddlers are called late bloomers.
And of course, late talking is one of the primary symptoms of autism or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and for intellectual disability (which was formally known as mental retardation).
While speech delays are very common among children with autism, they are common in children without autism as well.
Many kids with speech delays have oral–motor problems. These happen when there's a problem in the areas of the brain responsible for speech. This makes it hard to coordinate the lips, tongue, and jaw to make speech sounds. These kids also might have other oral-motor problems, such as feeding problems.
Speech/Language Milestones
Boys tend to develop language skills a little later than girls, but in general, kids may be labeled "late-talking children" if they speak less than 10 words by the age of 18 to 20 months, or fewer than 50 words by 21 to 30 months of age.
The main difference between other speech delays and autism-related speech delays is that children who are just late talkers still attempt to engage and communicate in different ways. For example, they might make babbling sounds, point, and use other types of body language to get what they want.
A child with a speech delay tends to naturally use body language and eye contact. Autistic children, on the other hand, may have trouble with social interaction, play skills, communication, and behavior. Children with autism may prefer to be alone.
Children who are late talkers will often have trouble with spoken or expressive language. While they understand instructions, and can point at objects etc, they may not be able to verbally express their wants and needs, or perhaps are less clear in producing common speech sounds.
While many Late Talkers seem to catch up to their peers by the time they start school, these children continue to have weaker language skills in areas such as vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing, and listening comprehension [1].
So if your toddler is 2 or 3 years old and isn't yet talking, it's vital to go ahead and speak with their pediatrician, or with a speech-language pathologist. They will likely recommend a speech evaluation in order to assess your child's current abilities. Early intervention is so important in these situations.
The most common causes of speech delay include: Hearing loss. Slow development. Intellectual disability.
Talking: What to expect when
By age 3, your child will probably have words for almost everything. And by age 4, he'll talk in sentences using five or more words, though his vocabulary will vary widely. He'll also be able to answer simple questions and mimic adult sounds well enough for most strangers to understand him.
Late talkers differ from toddlers with language development disorders and disabilities in the sense that their only characteristic is that they experience limited expressive vocabulary for their age, as opposed to a lack of receptive language or cognitive abilities.
However, the study also reports that a late talker is more prone to develop language and literacy difficulties later on. Some of the outcomes listed by the study include: At age 5, children identified as late talkers showed lower scores on complex language skills, such as narrating a simple story.
However, experts do share the observation that late-talking may cluster in families. It is only typical for a late-talking child to have a parent, cousin, uncle, or grandparent who was also a late-talker. A late-talker may even have a relative who has had a speech or language disorder.
Statistics Warn Us That Boys are Usually Slower to Talk.
Children naturally vary in the time taken to reach language milestones, and gender has been shown to be partly responsible for this variability.
Eating lots of fruit and vegetables, nuts and seeds as well as healthy grass-fed meat, wild game and oily fish and avoiding processed foods, can go a very long way in maintaining a healthy balance and limiting oxidative stress.
There are several things that can cause speech delays, such as hearing loss, physical problems in the roof of the mouth, learning disabilities, or certain diagnosable conditions like autism spectrum disorder or cerebral palsy.