Almost every parent of a quiet two-year-old has been told to wait. Sometimes that is right. Sometimes it costs a year.
The difficulty is that “he’ll talk when he’s ready” is true often enough to sound wise, and wrong often enough to matter. What follows is how clinicians actually think about it, so you can judge your own child rather than your neighbour’s anecdote.
Ranges are wide, and that is real
Children vary enormously in when they start talking, far more than they vary in when they walk. Broadly, most children use a few single words around their first birthday, start combining two words somewhere in the second year, and become largely intelligible to people outside the family during the third.
Those are midpoints of wide ranges, not deadlines. A child at the later end of every one of them can be entirely typical.
So word count alone is a weak signal. What matters much more is everything happening around the words.
The things that matter more than word count
Understanding. Does your child understand more than they say? Can they follow a simple instruction without you pointing or gesturing — “get your shoes” while you stay still and say nothing else? A child who understands well and says little is in a very different position from one who does neither.
Communicating without words. Pointing at things to show you, not just to ask for them. Bringing you an object to share it. Making eye contact to check you have noticed something interesting. These are the foundations speech is built on, and their absence matters more than a small vocabulary.
Direction of travel. Is the child slowly gaining, even if behind? Or standing still? Standing still for months is more concerning than being behind but moving.
Losing skills. Any loss of words, gestures or social interest that a child previously had is worth a same-week conversation with a doctor. This one is not a wait-and-see.
Get the hearing tested. Actually do it
This is the most skipped step and the most rewarding one. Hearing loss can be partial, can fluctuate, and can follow repeated ear infections — a child may hear you perfectly on a good day and barely at all on a bad one.
A child cannot learn to say sounds they cannot reliably hear. Hearing testing is quick and non-invasive, and it either removes a whole explanation or finds a treatable one. Do it before anything else.
Two languages is not the reason
Growing up with more than one language does not cause language delay. Bilingual children may distribute their early words across two languages, so a count in one language alone can look low. Total vocabulary across both is the meaningful measure.
If a bilingual child is genuinely delayed, it is not because of the second language, and removing a language from the home does not help. It usually removes something the child needs.
What actually happens at an assessment
Not a test the child can fail. A clinician takes a careful history from you, watches your child play and interact, and works out which part of the system is struggling — hearing, understanding, the physical production of speech, the social drive to communicate, or general development. Those have different answers.
Often the answer is that nothing is wrong and you now have a baseline. That is a legitimate result and worth having.
When to stop waiting
Speak to someone if your child is not using single words well into the second year, is not combining words during the third, is hard for family to understand as they approach school age, seems not to understand what is said, has lost skills, or if you have simply been worried for months. The last one is a real indication. Parents are usually right that something is different, even when they are wrong about what.
Waiting is a reasonable plan when the child is moving forward and everything else looks sound. It is a poor plan when nothing is changing.
Where we fit
We assess children across our centres in India and the UK. How we assess explains what an appointment involves, and our page on speech delay covers the clinical background in more detail.
This article is general information. It is not a diagnosis and not advice about your individual child. If your child has lost skills they previously had, speak to a doctor promptly.