When Should You Suspect Speech Delay?

Hey, this is ming here from agentsofspeech.com today we want to talk about when you should suspect for speech delay. So I get this question nearly every day on the Internet. And people will ask me specifically, mothers will ask me, oh, my child is around 12 months or like 13 months or whatever. He has no any like sounds. When should I start to be worried? Okay? That is the exact wording around. I'm paraphrasing. And what I would say is, number one, below 1.5 years old is too young too, to do any type of therapy. All right? Some might argue otherwise, but for me, at the very least, if I get a client who is below one year and six months, I will totally tell them to just wait for a bit and give them some techniques to do at home, which is language facilitation. We've talked about this a lot in the channel. Just search for it here and you will know how to do it. Okay? And why I say this, because typically for norms, like language norms, right, for different countries, at least that the ones that I've worked with had exposure to around a year and a half is the point where would be the cutoff point of where I would say, oh, this is too late. This is the latest a child would acquire a single word, right? So if they're over one and a half years old and they haven't used single words yet, then, yeah, you should totally get an assessment. Not saying that I'm trying to, like, induce fear in you and say, oh, no, like a lot of children, it's. It's a. It's a spectrum, right? It's like a range of how children will develop. And we're just. I'm just telling you, with data, right, that it will. By one and a half years old, they should be most. 90% of children, 99% maybe, depending on where you are and the norms and so on. You better check it out. Is already the latest. Your child should be picking up single words. Okay? And a lot of people are talking about how in the usa, it's like they're saying, oh, the CDC is changing their guidelines or whatever. That doesn't affect me at all, to be honest, because we, when we're doing like a language assessment, we need to look at the language norms of that particular area, which is not determined by the government, is determined by scientific research. But so us therapists, we look at that and sometimes what it affects is the government service, right? So what happens is that if a child falls below a certain guideline, then they receive more Therapy, no therapy. Or, you know, less therapy. Okay? So the second point here is by 2 years old, your child should be able to combine words. So if your child at that point at two, they're not able to combine words together, like for instance, like mama, drink, right? Drink water or red table, whatever, like just two words that are grammatically incorrect doesn't matter. That's called telegraphic speech. It doesn't matter if they are not grammatically correct as long as they're putting words together some way somehow. All right, so if by 2 years old your child isn't combining words, then yeah, go see a speech therapist immediately. Okay. And any age above that, okay. Any age above 2, if you see that your child is lacking behind from your peers, from their peers, I mean, then you should totally get an assessment. Okay? I usually see these, these three places. One and a half, two and three. Okay? If by one and a half they cannot say single words, go get assessment. At 2, if they cannot combine words together, go get assessment. If my three, they're not using like simple sentences like I want that cookie or like the cat is walking like that, then yeah, see a speech therapist by five, okay? By five they should be speaking nearly as well as an adult in terms of language. Okay? So the last thing I want to talk about is what's the best time to start speech therapy? And that is around two and a half. Okay. And why I say this, like, there's a lot of services out there that start early intervention at around below two. Okay. And I am not a big fan of that because I don't think it's very, very effective as a therapist. And especially speech therapy is a labor intensive and we have a lot of qualifications and therefore we need to charge premium prices. Right? It's just how the whole market works if you're not asking for government services. Right? So, so given that, then what you need to think is, okay, I should start therapy when my child is ready to learn. And therefore we have loads of videos talking about there are learning to learn skills. Right? If your child is going through like they cannot sit nicely, they cannot follow yet, there's a lot of disruptive behavior, then I think speech therapy isn't the best use of your money and time. Maybe you can look into like early intervention number one or any type of special needs support. If after the assessment they, they offer you for that, right? Or you can, if your child is suspected to be on the spectrum, you can start some ABA therapy. But at the same time, I wouldn't push like hardcore speech therapy or ABA therapy for that matter. Before two and a half, you can have some floor time or whatever, but at the same time, we've talked about, like, floor time on this channel as well. But the fact is that it will look like it's not effective. There's a lot of play therapy that is. That doesn't look very effective. Okay? So therefore, what I experienced is that go do some play therapy. Go do some lesser, maybe little bit of aba more so of some early intervention. Get them into small interest groups that they can play together or play dates or whatever. And then slowly, as they get to two and a half, if they are still not combining words and they're still not speaking in, like, sentences yet, then get them into speech therapy, or if they're on the spectrum, go for aba. Okay, so that's it for this video. Let me know if you have any questions. If you. If you haven't, go to agents of Speech.com checklist for a list of tools and toys that we recommend you when you're starting home therapy. All right, so I'll see you in the next one. Bye. Bye.