Ming from Agents of Speech argues that chasing language milestones misses the point. A child not responding to their name might have insufficient language input, weak parent-child interaction, or autism spectrum differences. Assessment should target root causes, not surface symptoms.
Milestones are everywhere on the Internet and there's no one good perfect standard where we say, yo, listen up, this is what works. Maybe in the future we can gather language data a lot better with AI. Think about what you're trying to achieve with your child. Treatment is always thinking about, your child cannot do something. Why cannot they do something? Can we solve underlying deficits? If we cannot, then why is it we keep on trying? Assessment, hitting milestones doesn't mean anything. If you're thinking about treating the milestones by milestone, like my child doesn't respond to their name, then you are not treating the underlying deficit. You are treating things symptom by symptom. Understand why there was a delay in the very first place. Was there not enough language input at home? Was it that parent child interaction wasn't as good as it should be? That the child doesn't understand why they have to communicate that they're on the spectrum, they have a different understanding of the world than we do. Right? All these things you have to take into account.
