Speech after 4.5?

[FinnsMammy]

Hi all just wanted to hear from those of you that had totally non verbal kiddos at 4.5 and older that went on to speak. I know speech may not be on the cards for us now that he’s 4 and a half and every child is unique but I’m just curious if your kid did develop language late how did it happen? My little lad has understanding and copies everything gross motor (this rampup in gross motor imitation is fairly new) he only really copies 1 or 2 sounds though … did increase in imitation lead to imitation of sounds then words ? Thanks 🙏

My DD was non-verbal until about 4/5 years old (apart from some imitation and animal noises). She's now 11 and has a lot more speech than I ever expected her to have, she uses quite stunted sentences however she's really curious and will ask me what things mean ("what zoo?") I realise it's not the same has having fluid speech, but she can make herself understood a lot of the time and she understands us as well. It did all start with imitation as well :)

@Nannyogg134 thanks for your reply. Delighted she’s doing so well. Do you mind me asking what your daughters diagnosis is? We don’t have one yet other than GDD but I think he may be assessed as having Apraxia as part of whatever his diagnosis maybe hence why I ask. He’s pretty social and has great joint attention he’s potty trained for a year now, knows all his alphabet, colours , shapes , numbers , animals etc and follows instructions so it’s mainly the expressive language and fine motor delays… so we are thinking there may be apraxia there but it’s still too hard to tell as he isn’t really copying sounds yet besides the odd one. 🙈

Hi op my dd is 5 in Sept she was completely non verbal until end of Nov Dec then said the characters names from hey duggee to me and everyday since she has said a new word,
She still can't say a complete sentence but has realized she can use language to ask for something so she will say toilet, juice, apple instead of using hand pulling she will say these one word commands, she is also great at repeating words such as just yesterday she said be careful with the egg ! All in one go it's a line from a book and the longest sentence she has said it's a slow process but I see improvement all the time my dd has gdd and autism.
We are so proud of her and how far she has come as we didn't think she would talk at all her understanding is still quite poor but has definitely improved as time goes on, another complete surprise was due to her now using her voice we discovered she can read ! Her nursery teachers were amazed, and so were we
please don't lose hope all the best to you and your family x

Hello, my DD didn’t start putting two-three word sentences together until she was 3 and wasn’t fully conversational until she was closer to 5. At 9 she now can’t stop talking and you wouldn’t know that she ever had a speech delay. I realise that we are very lucky - there was a time when I genuinely thought I would never be able to have a proper conversation with her and it was heartbreaking. She now has a diagnosis of ADHD (severe) and I think she likely had global development delay although this was never formally diagnosed. She was very poorly as a baby (this will be outing but she had meningitis at under three months old) and it is my personal belief that this caused the delays she has had, which (to me) would also explain the degree of catch-up.

Apologies I've only just seen this. She is autistic with GDD and learning disability :)