Simple speech delays are sometimes temporary. They might work out on their own or with a little extra help from the family. It's important to encourage your child to talk to you with gestures or sounds and to spend a lot of time playing with your baby or toddler, reading, and talking to him. If your toddler has speech delays, he or she might catch up naturally.
But there's a 20 to 30 percent chance that you'll continue to struggle without support. In addition, since we cannot predict which young children will fall by 20 to 30%, we recommend that all parents of young children with speech delays ask a speech therapist to evaluate them as soon as they realize there is a problem. Also, if your toddler has a speech delay that doesn't end up accelerating over time, then early intervention is what he'll need. Your toddler's speech and language progress may be an indication of the level of support they'll need, but keep in mind that it's not a guarantee one way or the other.
We also recommend that you understand well what you can do at home to contribute to the development of 26 percent of your language speech. If your toddler has speech development that would have accelerated anyway, if he gets support in these early years, he'll get up to speed much faster.
