How early should you start speech therapy with a toddler?

How can I tell if my child needs help with speech of if he’s just a late talker?

Will speech get better by itself or is therapy really required when there are speech problems?

These are all questions I’ve gotten from parents in our Facebook Group.

And although they all sound different, they all come down to one thing…

When you have concerns about your child’s speech, should you start therapy right away, or should you “wait and see”?

Because ultimately, those are your two options.

Either you start providing extra support for your child’s speech, or you wait and find out with time whether their speech improves on its own.

Personally, I’ll never recommend wait and see.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to (or that it would even be possible to) start professional speech therapy right away either.

I’ll explain that more and talk about what the options are.

But first…

Let’s talk about the problem with “wait and see”.

Here’s the issue…

It might work.

It might not.

And the only way to find out is to… wait.

If it works, fabulous.

Your child’s speech is where it should be, which is obviously the ultimate goal, and you probably saved yourself some time and money in the process.

But if it doesn’t work…

You just missed out on months of time that you could have been helping your child make extra progress with speech.

And that’s not to say that you can’t still make great progress if you wait. You absolutely can.

But you’ll never get that time back.

Waiting is a gamble, and in my mind, not one worth taking.

“But I talked to my child’s pediatrician and she told us we need to wait 6 months before she’d even consider referring us for a speech eval!”

Yes, this happens… a lot.

Doctors seem to be big fans of waiting.

And with the new CDC developmental milestones, they’re probably going to recommend waiting even longer than they did before (at least in the US).

You may also find that 6 months later when you finally get your speech referral, you’re stuck on a year long waitlist before you’ll be able to actually see a therapist.

That doesn’t mean you have to wait.

Yes, it means you might not be able to start working with a speech therapist right away.

That’s okay.

Practice at home.

Start by looking at developmental milestones and finding out when kids usually have different speech skills.

You may discover that you don’t actually have anything to worry about and your child is right on track.

Or maybe you’ll find some skills you want to start targeting more directly.

If that’s the case, decide how you want to work on those skills.

Pick a strategy and part of your daily routine when you can practice for 10-15 minutes a day.

It doesn’t have to be a ton of time, and you don’t have to follow a complicated 28 step process.

Consistency is the important part, so keep this as simple and easy as you can.

Then practice.

Even if you can’t get in to see a speech therapist yet.

Even if your sister’s friend’s cousin said that her child started talking on her own and you should just give it more time.

Even if you aren’t fully confident in what you’re doing.

Practice.

Just a little bit every day.

If you have concerns about your child’s speech, don’t wait and see…

​Start now.