How can I tell if my child is ready to talk?

Pre-language skills are paramount to building a strong foundation for spoken language It can be concerning when your little one isn’t yet talking or even babbling as much as other kids their age. Though all children develop differently and at different rates, there are some communication milestones and benchmarks we can use as a framework for tracking a child’s communication development.

Having an idea of what a “typical” 12 month, 18 month, or 24 month old is understanding and how they’re communicating can help inform a parent on when is an appropriate time to reach out to a specialist for evaluation or a professional opinion.

But knowing when and how to reach out is tricky. We’ve all heard those anecdotes, “My mother in law says my husband didn’t talk until he was 3 and he turned out fine.” And while this is true for some people, it’s more commonly the exception to the rule.

The amount of development that happens in the first 3 years of life encourages us to not take that chance with our little ones. Any speech-language pathologist you talk to will tell you, if you’re worried there’s a delay, trust your intuition and at least get an evaluation. After all, evaluation helps give a baseline to measure progress and informs us where the child is falling on the developmental milestone chart. Often there are other environmental or physical factors that are inhibiting a child from learning that we aren’t aware of. These can be some fluid in the middle ear (yes, even without an ear infection) which are making sounds and words muffled, or the presence of a TV in the background throughout the day. Though they may not be interested or paying attention to CNN, their ability to ignore it and attend to what their parent is saying is most definitely diminished.

Let’s get into the real good stuff… those early signs that a child' isn’t ready to talk, and the problems that can occur as a result.