Scared my 2 year old will never speak

[Klippin]

I’d really love to hear some positive stories from parents of children who were very late to babble and speak ❤️

Did anyone have a child who was very social and communicative from a young age — lots of eye contact, pointing, gestures/signs, joint attention, understanding what you were saying and wanting to interact — but who just didn’t develop babbling or spoken words?

I’m particularly hoping to hear from parents whose child was over 2½ before they really started babbling or saying words, but who did eventually go on to develop speech.
How old were they when things finally started to change? Did speech come gradually or was there suddenly a big leap?

And most importantly, what seemed to help? Was it speech therapy, apraxia-specific therapy, signing, something else, or simply time and development?

It can feel quite lonely when your child is developing and connecting so beautifully in other ways but speech just isn’t coming, so I’d really appreciate hearing some hopeful stories from families who have been further down this road. ❤️

Niece and her cousins on the other side of the family were slow to speak. They all took turns for a speech assessment. We were all interested to learn that animal sounds count as words: neigh/quack/moo and so forth.
Niece scored all 9s and a 7 on her GCSEs.

I wouldn’t say mine ever babbled.

but like someone else above he was very active. Actually he could ride a bike before he could talk. Crawled, walked, ran, climbed out of cot all before 1 year

@Klippin yes - he babbled (I seem to recall there was a lot of babbling and pointing so we kind of communicated - but was told that I shouldn’t respond to kind of force him into speech ! )

Yes xx

According to MIL, DH didn’t speak until he was 3, then started speaking in full sentences. He’s now a lawyer, no problems with literacy or oral communication.