No words at 14 months

[Anonymous]

No, that is not normal. Find a speech language pathologist and schedule an appointment for a speech evaluation.

[Anonymous]

We did DC early intervention for eating solids and had a very positive experience with the assessment. The OT we got actually wasn’t super helpful, so we also hired private feeding therapy.

Because sometimes speech therapists are the ones that do feeding therapy, we also met with the speech therapist at the private place we went to. That meeting raised some concerns in our son who - while he had probably about four or five words at 10 or 11 months – he seemed to have fairly limited receptive language skills. Then suddenly, shortly after turning one, it was like a switch flipped, and his receptive and expressive language took off.

Is your baby pointing at things? That’s such a powerful form of communication and it preceded his language taking off by about a month.

I mentioned all this to say: 1. do reach out to early intervention or find private therapy, it really is nice to talk to an expert about these things, but but realize that you may need to meet with more than one place to find the right person and 2. For us at least, it really was like a sudden change in his to ability to communicate and understand. If I were in your shoes, I would start taking steps to line up some therapy, but I would not feel too worried yet as the change can happen fairly abruptly and, as people on this thread of pointed out, it can happen at many different ages in the first 2 to 3 years of life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi! My baby has no words yet at 14 months. She is meeting all other milestones -- she can wave back at you, imitate actions like clapping, tries to use things the right way (like putting a hairbrush on her hair and trying to brush it), and she babbles a lot and sometimes imitates sounds, but no words, not even a clear "Mama." Is this normal?

Contact Infants and Toddlers and have them do an assessment. You may qualify for some services - they come to your home and work with your child. I did this with my DC and we received some home visits and services from a special education teacher and an OT. I also enrolled my child in private speech therapy. When my child turned 2, Infants and Toddlers had a small program two mornings a week and it was awesome. My pediatrician also referred us to a developmental pediatrician at 18 months. It can be scary when your little is not meeting milestones, but there is help. Don't wait though. Contact them now. Everything may be fine, but if there are specific speech needs, then you want to start early.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Clinical social worker. Absence of a caregiver word at 12mo is a hard red flag for ASD assessment. You should get further testing.

I wish that were the case but none of the professionals we worked with considered this a "hard red flag" at this age. We got the diagnosis several years later.

[Anonymous]

I had same experience. I got led to refer to early intervention, and a speech therapist came to the house for weekly sessions for about 2 months. I did the sounds every day with child. Worked very well. Child became and early reader (37 months old) and her younger sibling (12 months younger her) became early talker due to exposure and continued practice. It was so freeing for the silent child. She had so much to say!

[Anonymous]

Absence of any words or any sounds for words at 14 months is definitely a flag. They may just be on the slow end but that will definitely be a referral to early intervention.

You might as well do early intervention, if they are just slow, then no harm done but if they have an issue then you started to get help early.

Despite that other posters are saying, it is not normal to reach 18 months without any intentional sounds or words.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Absence of any words or any sounds for words at 14 months is definitely a flag. They may just be on the slow end but that will definitely be a referral to early intervention.

You might as well do early intervention, if they are just slow, then no harm done but if they have an issue then you started to get help early.

Despite that other posters are saying, it is not normal to reach 18 months without any intentional sounds or words.

Lady literally nobody is saying no words at 18 months is "normal" but it is true and PPs have experienced that many (but not all) late talkers do catch up. Sorry that upsets you for some bizarre reason.

14 months is not especially late but OP's kid might qualify for services especially if still not talking at 15 or 16 months when the assessment occurs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son didn't start talking tell close to 2 years old . We had him working with birth to 3 . His pediatrician thought he was tongue tied and my ex wanted to get his tongue clipped. I was not sure he was tied and took him to an ent doctor who said he was fine. We had his hearing checked and that was good. We did nothing and waited . He's now 5 and talking fine for the most part . Give him time.

And, worth testing on possible structural issues - hearing, speech etc.
My husband spoke late and it was a hearing issue. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

I think there is a spectrum of what is expected, but if your are worried it never hurts to get help. My kid only had a couple of words at 18 months old so I sought out an evaluation from a private speech therapist. It was the best decision because we found out there was a delay and once he began speech therapy he gained so many words so quickly. I used Communicating Kids Speech & Language https://www.communicatingkids.net/

[Anonymous]

Does she babble or sound like she’s speaking? The vast majority of children starts with syllables, then words, the stringing two or more words together and finally sentences. But then there are children who’ll start with long phrases or chunks, which are however mostly incomprehensible, and from there go to creating meaningful language. One of my children did this, and is now highly verbal and socially aware. See https://www.childandfamilydevelopment.com/blog/natural-language-acquisition-approach/
Children with autism acquire language like this, but acquiring language this way doesn’t indicate autism.
Having said that, nothing wrong with an evaluation

[Anonymous]

If you’re worried, the good thing about contacting services is they will tell you if you need to be!