When should we get worried and get a speech therapist when our child hasn’t started talking yet?

As this article details, (http://www.hanen.org/helpful-info/articles/how-to-tell-if-your-child-is-a-late-talker-%E2%80%93-and-w.aspx), it is very important to monitor kids speech development milestones to catch early on that your if your child is at risk of developmental challenges such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, including Asperger Syndrome. The following guidelines can help you determine if your child’s vocabulary is appropriate for his or her age. If your child has not yet reached these milestones, he or she should be seen by a speech-language pathologist: 18 month olds should use least 20 words, including different types of words, such as nouns (“baby”, “cookie”), verbs (“eat”, “go”), prepositions (“up”, “down”), adjectives (“hot”, “sleepy”), and social words (“hi”, “bye”). 24 month olds should use at least 100 words and combine 2 words together. These word combinations should be generated by the child, and not be combinations that are “memorized chunks” of language, such as “thank you”, “bye bye”, “all gone”, or “What’s that?”. Examples of true word combinations would be “doggie gone”, “eat cookie”, or “dirty hands”.

Learning how to talk varies from child to child. When I was a first time mummy, I was worried sick that my daughter showed ZERO interest in talking. She wouldn't even mumble and would just keep pointing at things she wanted. I kept reading books to her, and would stop randomly at words that I was so sure she knew but she'd stare at me blankly expecting me to continue. She was about 26 months then. My dad told me to relax and give it a couple of months and to stop forcing it on her and told me to believe it her. I also started letting her mix around with kids her age and I think at about 28 months, she suddenly called me Mama! So happy then. She also starting stringing sentences at a very late age and was only to speak in full sentences at 6 years old when she started kindergarten. She's 7 years old now and so extremely chatty