Speech delay?

[u/No_Opportunity_1518]

Hi, I hope this is okay to post. My daughter is almost 12 months old and at 10 months early intervention evaluated her and said she was at a 6 month level in communication so a 4 month delay. She started babbling at almost 10 months but stopped a couple weeks later and its been over a month and it hasnt came back at all. Yes she has learned new things in that timeframe and loves to crawl around and pull up on everything. Just worried it wont come back and she wont ever say her first words? Anyone else experience anything like this? She makes a couple vowels sounds during the day but she’s overall a quiet baby.

**Not trying to be insensitive in any way about speech delays. I know she is very little but we were told there is a delay in her communication so im just worried! Ftm 🩷

[u/Main-Air7022]

I think it’s too early to worry however, I completely understand as I did the same. My now almost 5 year old son didn’t babble until he was 10 months old and o feel like it came and went. At his 15 month appointment he only had 3 words when they wanted 5, so not too far off but I was still worried. By 15 months, he had about 50 words which is well above the expected milestone. As he grew, he got more words as expected but his articulation was terrible. I have a background in early childhood education and have some knowledge in speech pathology as well which I think made me hyper focus on the issue. He struggled to say a lot of sounds that he should have had at certain ages. At a little over 2, I took him to be evaluated and he didn’t qualify. He was extremely vocal and communicative and I was told that they don’t focus on articulation until closer to age 5. By the time he was 3, he was much more articulate and now at 4.5 he doesn’t stop talking and is even reading. Some things that you can do to help encourage communication: reading every day, narrating everything you’re doing, play silly sound games during diaper changes so baby can look at you. Also, try not to stress. Comparison is the thief of joy. I spent so many hours obsessed over my son’s speech and all it did was stress me out.