10-Minute Speech Practice That Doesn't Require Sitting Still

Last updated 2026-07-09

Is it normal for a bilingual toddler to talk later?

No. Bilingual children reach language milestones at the same ages as monolingual children. This is probably the most stubborn myth in early childhood development, and it does real harm, because it hands worried families a reason to wait.

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association is direct on this point ^[1]. Bilingual kids may mix two languages in a single sentence, which is called code-switching and is completely typical, but the total number of words they know across both languages keeps pace with their peers. A 24-month-old who knows 30 words in English and 25 in Spanish has a combined vocabulary of 55 words. That clears the 50-word threshold fine.

The myth grew out of a real finding that got misread. Bilingual kids sometimes have slightly smaller vocabularies in each single language compared to a monolingual child the same age, because their input is split between two. Count total conceptual vocabulary, though, and the gap disappears ^[2]. The catch: many screening tools test only one language, which makes bilingual kids look behind when they are right on track.

So when a pediatrician or a well-meaning relative says "oh, he's just confused by two languages, give it time," that advice has no support in current research. Confusion is not a mechanism that causes delay. What causes delay is a genuine language or developmental issue that happens to sit alongside bilingualism.

What are the real speech milestones for bilingual toddlers?

Count words across both languages, then compare to the table below. The American Academy of Pediatrics developmental surveillance guidance ^[3] and ASHA's norms ^[1] line up closely here, and both count combined vocabulary for bilingual kids.

Those numbers come from large normative samples. Nobody expects a child to hit the exact figure on the exact day. But if your child is more than a month or two behind on several rows of that table, that is the signal to act.

One red flag gets nowhere near enough attention: a bilingual toddler who had words and then stopped using them. Loss of language, in any language, is never a wait-and-see situation. The AAP recommends immediate evaluation if a child loses skills at any age ^[3].

Another flag slips past parents all the time. A child who communicates heavily through gestures, pointing, or pulling your hand, but produces very few words. Gestures are good. They are a real precursor to talking. But if gestures are doing all the work by 18 months and words stay sparse in both languages, that pattern deserves a look.

How do you tell the difference between a late talker and a language disorder?

Honestly, you often can't from the outside, not without a proper evaluation. That is the question that haunts parents at 2 a.m., and the plain answer reflects real clinical reality, not a dodge.

A "late talker" in the research literature is a child aged 18 to 30 months who has fewer words than expected, but whose comprehension, social engagement, play skills, and hearing all check out. Somewhere between 50 and 70% of late talkers catch up by school age without any intervention ^[4]. These are the kids people call "late bloomers."

Here is the trap in that statistic. You cannot reliably tell at age 2 which children will bloom and which will not. The ones who do not catch up carry higher risk for reading difficulties, social communication challenges, and lasting language disorders ^[4]. The cost of guessing wrong is real. Early intervention services in the U.S., available through the IDEA Part C program for children under 3, are free and require no diagnosis to start ^[5].

Language disorders look different from plain late talking. A child with a language disorder usually struggles more with understanding language than with producing it. Watch for these signs: trouble following two-step directions ("get your shoes and put them by the door"), not responding to their name reliably, thin eye contact or joint attention (pointing at things to share interest, not only to request), and very restricted play, like lining objects up instead of pretending with them.

If any of those social communication markers show up alongside the speech delay, the picture is more complex and evaluation is urgent, not optional. That is not a diagnosis. It is a flag that the delay may not be purely about getting words out.

Does speaking two languages cause or worsen a speech delay?

No. Bilingualism does not cause speech or language disorders, and it does not make an existing disorder worse ^[2]. A child with a language processing difficulty will have it whether one language is spoken at home or two.

A 2010 review by Kathryn Kohnert in the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, drawing on the broader bilingual disorders literature, found the disorder rate is roughly the same in bilingual and monolingual children, around 7 to 8% of the population ^[2][10]. Two languages do not add risk.

There is also no evidence that dropping a home language and switching entirely to the majority language helps a delayed child catch up faster. It can do the opposite. It cuts the child off from the richer, warmer input of caregivers who speak the home language fluently and naturally, which is exactly what a language-delayed child needs more of. ASHA states plainly that parents should keep using the language they speak most comfortably ^[1].

This is one of those cases where the "obvious" fix, just speak one language so the kid isn't confused, is flat wrong. Rich, consistent input in whatever language a caregiver speaks best beats a thin diet of the majority language from someone who is not fluent in it.

What language should you speak to a bilingual toddler who has a speech delay?

Speak the language you speak best. That is the whole answer, and the evidence backs it.

The reason matters. Input quality rides on vocabulary richness, natural rhythm and prosody, how quickly you respond to your child's attempts, and the warmth that comes with speaking your strongest language. Force a Spanish-dominant parent to run every conversation in English and you get flatter affect, simpler words, and fewer spontaneous replies to the child's cues. Those things matter enormously for a child already fighting to build language.

When parents speak different languages, the "one parent, one language" approach (OPOL) is a reasonable structure. But the research on whether it beats mixed-language input is genuinely thin. Consistency, volume, and responsiveness matter far more than the specific strategy label.

Volume deserves its own line. Children learn language by hearing a lot of it, in real conversation, in books, in narrated daily routines. A delayed child needs more input, not less. Talking through what you are doing ("I'm putting the apple in the bowl, now I'm cutting it, look, two pieces") is the kind of naturalistic input speech therapists call self-talk and parallel talk. It costs nothing.

Working with a speech therapist? Ask them straight out: should sessions focus on one language or both? For a bilingual child the answer should generally involve both, ideally with a therapist who is bilingual or who works with a bilingual assistant.

How do you get a bilingual toddler evaluated for a speech delay?

Two main routes exist, and you can run both at once. Start today. Neither one requires you to wait for the next scheduled appointment.

First route: your child's pediatrician. At the 18-month and 24-month well-child visits, the AAP recommends standardized developmental screening ^[3]. The M-CHAT-R (Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, Revised) is commonly used at 18 and 24 months. If screening flags a concern, the pediatrician refers to a speech-language pathologist (SLP) or a developmental pediatrician. You do not have to wait for the scheduled visit. Call and ask for a referral if you are worried.

Second route: your state's Early Intervention program. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Part C, every state must provide free evaluations and services to children under 36 months who have developmental delays or conditions likely to cause them ^[5]. You can self-refer. No doctor's order needed. Find your state's program through the CDC's Learn the Signs. Act Early. pages ^[7], or call 1-800-CDC-INFO.

For a bilingual child, insist on an evaluation that covers both languages. A monolingual English assessment will often underestimate what a bilingual child can do, which produces both false positives (labeling a typical bilingual child as delayed) and false negatives (missing a real disorder the child masks in one language). Ask specifically whether the evaluating SLP has experience with bilingual assessment. If not, ask for a referral to someone who does.

If cost or access worries you, early intervention through IDEA Part C is genuinely free for families who qualify on developmental criteria, not income. Congress built that program because early identification and treatment change outcomes.

For the bigger picture of what speech therapy actually involves, the speech therapy speech therapist overview is a good starting point.

Why are parents getting so frustrated when their toddler is not talking?

Because it is genuinely hard. That frustration is valid, and it does not make you a bad parent.

Not being able to communicate with your own child wears you down in a way that is tough to explain to anyone who hasn't lived it. You don't know if they hurt, what they want, whether they even understood you. Every meal, every car ride, every bedtime turns into a guessing game. Stack that daily grind on top of fear about your child's future, questions from relatives, and a medical system that keeps telling you to wait.

The frustration is partly physiological, too. Chronic communication failure is stressful. Your nervous system reacts to it. This is not a character flaw.

A few things actually help. Set up a simple, consistent gesture or signal system for the most urgent daily needs (eat, drink, more, stop). This is not giving up on words. It is cutting the immediate friction while you build language underneath. AAC devices and low-tech picture boards do this job well.

When you are in the thick of it and need to reset, drop the communicative demand entirely for a few minutes. Get on the floor. Follow the child's lead. Play with whatever they are into, with no push to get speech out of them. Therapists call this floor time or child-directed interaction, and it produces more spontaneous language than drilling does.

Your own mental health counts here. Parent stress shapes parent responsiveness, and parent responsiveness is one of the strongest predictors of language development. Finding support, a parent group, a therapist, even an online community of families in the same spot, is not a luxury.

What can parents do at home to help a bilingual toddler talk more?

Respond, expand, read, and comment more than you question. The strategies below come from parent-implemented intervention research and match what ASHA recommends for families working alongside professional services ^[1]. They do not replace an evaluation. They run in parallel and produce real gains.

Respond to every communication attempt. Your child points at the cup? Say the word (in your language), hand it over, say it again. You are pairing meaning with sound. Any vocalization at all, treat it as a real communicative act, because it is.

Expand what your child says. They say "ball," you say "red ball" or "big ball roll." This is called expansion, one of the best-studied home strategies in the language literature ^[4]. You model the next step without correcting or demanding imitation.

Read books every day, in any language. Point at pictures, name them, then pause and wait. The pause matters. It opens space for the child to try a word or gesture. Nothing after three to five seconds? Model the word yourself and move on. Don't quiz. Just model.

Cut questions, add comments. "What's that?" is a hard demand. "Oh, a doggy, the doggy is running" is a model. Toddlers produce more language in response to comments than to questions, which feels backwards until you try it.

Little Words is built around this kind of parent-coached daily practice. For structured guidance on running these strategies with a bilingual child specifically, the start quiz helps you figure out where your child is and what to work on first.

If you are dealing with repetitive or echoed speech, the echolalia article explains when that is a normal stage and when it warrants a closer look.

Could my bilingual toddler's speech delay be related to autism?

It could be, and the overlap is worth understanding without jumping to conclusions.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) involves differences in social communication, which includes speech but goes well beyond it. The line between a "pure" language delay and ASD-related communication differences usually sits in the social domain: joint attention (pointing to share interest, following a gaze), reciprocal back-and-forth play, and using nonverbal communication like gesture and facial expression.

A bilingual child can have ASD. Being bilingual does not protect against it, and it does not cause it. ASD shows up across all language communities at roughly similar rates. If your child shows reduced eye contact, very limited pointing or gesturing, little interest in other children, or rigid repetitive behaviors on top of the speech delay, those signs point toward an evaluation for ASD specifically, more than a general speech check.

For parents at that intersection, autism spectrum speech therapy covers what evidence-based therapy looks like for children with ASD, including AAC options and social communication approaches.

For bilingual children with ASD, the guidance holds steady: keep using the home language, seek bilingual services where you can, and do not let worry about bilingualism delay the autism evaluation or the start of services. Research does not support the idea that dropping one language improves outcomes in children with ASD.

What if my child has apraxia of speech and is also bilingual?

Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a motor speech disorder where the brain struggles to program the movements speech requires. It is relatively rare, affecting roughly 1 in 1,000 children, but it is one of the more common reasons a child produces very few intelligible words despite clear comprehension and social engagement ^[6].

In bilingual children, CAS can look like near-silence in one language, or inconsistent production where a word is crisp one day and gone the next. Because CAS is a motor disorder, it hits the production mechanics no matter which language is being spoken. Both languages get affected.

CAS calls for specific therapy, particularly DTTC (Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing) and the Nuffield Dyspraxia Programme, not general language stimulation ^[6]. Worth knowing, because a well-meaning but untrained "just talk more" approach will not move the needle for a child with CAS.

Raise CAS by name with the evaluating SLP if your child's speech errors are highly variable ("baba" for bottle one day, "bata" the next), if they struggle to imitate sounds even when they clearly want to, and if longer words trip them up more than short ones. The childhood apraxia of speech article has more on diagnosis and treatment.

For bilingual families, the approach stays the same: CAS treatment should involve both languages, ideally with a therapist who has bilingual capability or can consult with one.

When should you stop waiting and start getting help?

Now. If you are reading this article, you are past the point where waiting makes sense.

The AAP presses hard on early identification ^[3], and the early intervention research is consistent: starting services before age 3 produces meaningfully better outcomes than starting at 4 or 5 ^[8]. Not because a magic window slams shut, but because the brain is most plastic in the early years, and because language builds on language ^[12]. Every month a child spends without adequate input is a month the gap can widen.

For children under 36 months, Early Intervention under IDEA Part C is the fastest path. Call your state program today, not after the next well-child visit. The evaluation is free. If your child qualifies, services are free or low-cost. If the evaluation says everything is fine, you have lost nothing but a little time and worry.

For children 3 and older, services shift to the school district under IDEA Part B, including preschool special education. You request an evaluation in writing from your district; in most states the district has 60 days to complete it ^[5].

To supplement public services or start before a waitlist clears, online speech therapy has become a legitimate and accessible option, including for bilingual families who need a therapist in a specific language combination.

The one move that never helps is waiting to see if things improve on their own when red flags are already up. If your child was developing typically and suddenly lost words, if they have no words at all by 18 months, or if their communication is mostly gestures with no verbal approximations by 24 months, those are referral-now situations, bilingualism or not.

Frequently asked questions

Do bilingual toddlers talk later than monolingual toddlers?

No. ASHA's guidance is clear that bilingual children reach language milestones at the same ages as monolingual children when vocabulary is counted across both languages. The myth persists because single-language tests can make bilingual kids look behind. If your child has 50 words total across both languages by 24 months, they are on track.

How many words should a bilingual 2-year-old have?

Around 50 words total, counted across both languages, is the benchmark at 24 months. That threshold comes from normative data used by ASHA and the AAP. By 30 months most children have 200 or more words and are combining them into short phrases. If your 2-year-old is well below 50 total words, request a speech evaluation.

Should I stop speaking my home language to help my toddler learn English faster?

No. ASHA advises parents to speak the language they know best, because richer input from a fluent speaker helps language development more than simplified input in a second language. Dropping the home language has not been shown to speed up the majority language. Speak your strongest language and get a professional evaluation if you are worried.

Can being bilingual make autism harder to diagnose?

It can complicate things if clinicians mistake code-switching or uneven language distribution for social communication deficits. That is why bilingual evaluation by an experienced clinician matters. The core signs of ASD (reduced joint attention, limited reciprocal play, restricted gestures) show up across languages. A proper bilingual autism evaluation should be conducted in both languages whenever possible.

What is code-switching and is it a sign of delay?

Code-switching is when a bilingual child uses words from both languages in one sentence, like "I want more leche." It is developmentally normal and reflects sophisticated language knowledge, not confusion. It is not a sign of delay. Bilingual children, and bilingual adults, code-switch because it is often the most precise or natural option in the moment.

My toddler understands both languages but doesn't speak. Is that still a delay?

Strong comprehension with limited production is a fairly common pattern. Some children are genuinely late in production and catch up. But "my child understands everything" can also be a parent perception that is not fully tested. An SLP evaluation assesses comprehension directly. If comprehension is confirmed as strong and production is the only gap, that is a more hopeful picture, but it still warrants monitoring and often intervention.

How do I find a bilingual speech-language pathologist?

ASHA maintains a provider locator at asha.org where you can filter by language. State Early Intervention programs also keep lists of bilingual providers. Be specific: ask whether the SLP assesses and treats in your child's exact language, more than whether they are bilingual in general. For less common languages, a trained interpreter working alongside a monolingual SLP is an accepted alternative per ASHA guidance.

Does my bilingual toddler need speech therapy in both languages?

Generally yes, especially for assessment. Therapy can run primarily in one language if the goal is community functioning, but research suggests skills generalize better when both languages are used. At minimum, the initial evaluation should cover both. Ask your SLP directly about their approach to bilingual treatment. An SLP who works only in the majority language may miss important strengths and gaps.

What is early intervention and how do I access it for my toddler?

Early Intervention is the federally mandated program under IDEA Part C that provides free developmental evaluations and services to children under 36 months. You self-refer by contacting your state's program directly. No doctor's order required. If your child qualifies, they receive an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP), and services can include speech therapy, occupational therapy, and developmental support in your home.

Is it normal for a bilingual toddler to go through a silent period?

A brief silent period when a young child is first heavily exposed to a second language, say at the start of daycare, is a documented phenomenon in second language acquisition. It usually lasts weeks to a few months, not a year or more. If a child has never been verbal in either language, that is not a silent period. If silence runs beyond a few months, or the child is over 18 months with no words, seek an evaluation.

Can screen time cause a bilingual toddler to talk less?

Heavy passive screen time is tied to reduced parent-child verbal interaction, which is the real mechanism of concern. The AAP recommends no screen time under 18 months except video chat, and limited high-quality content for 18 to 24 months with a caregiver watching together. The issue is not screens themselves but the displacement of responsive, back-and-forth interaction, which is the engine of language learning.

At what age is it too late for speech therapy to help?

It is never too late for speech therapy to produce gains, but earlier is meaningfully better. Language plasticity is highest under age 5, and early intervention research consistently shows services before age 3 produce better long-term outcomes than services started later. If your child is already past 3, start now rather than waiting further. The gap between acting today and acting in six months still matters.

What is the difference between a speech delay and a language delay in a bilingual child?

A speech delay is about pronunciation and articulation: the child attempts words but the sounds come out unclear or wrong for their age. A language delay is broader, covering vocabulary size, sentence structure, and comprehension. Bilingual children can have either, both, or neither. An SLP evaluation distinguishes between them because the treatments differ. Do not assume unclear speech is just an accent or a bilingual effect without a professional opinion.

Sources

1. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), Bilingual Service Delivery: Bilingual children reach language milestones at the same ages as monolingual children; parents should speak the language they know best.
2. Paradis, Genesee, Crago. Dual Language Development and Disorders (2nd ed.), Brookes Publishing, 2011; see also Kohnert K, American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 2010: No significant difference in language disorder prevalence between bilingual and monolingual children; bilingualism does not cause language disorders.
3. American Academy of Pediatrics, Developmental Surveillance and Screening: AAP recommends standardized developmental screening at 18 and 24 months; loss of skills at any age warrants immediate evaluation.
4. Rescorla L, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2002: Late talkers at age 2 outcomes at age 17: 50-70% of late talkers catch up, but children who do not are at higher risk for reading difficulties and ongoing language disorders; expansion is an evidence-based home strategy.
5. U.S. Department of Education, IDEA Part C Early Intervention Program: IDEA Part C requires states to provide free evaluations and services to children under 36 months with developmental delays; school districts have 60 days to complete evaluations under Part B.
6. Apraxia Kids (Childhood Apraxia of Speech Association of North America), What is CAS?: CAS affects approximately 1 in 1,000 children and requires specific motor-based therapy approaches like DTTC.
7. CDC, Learn the Signs. Act Early. Developmental Milestones: Developmental milestone data for 12, 18, 24, and 36 months including language production benchmarks; state Early Intervention program contacts.
8. ASHA, Early Intervention: Early intervention services starting before age 3 produce significantly better outcomes than later-starting services.
9. American Academy of Pediatrics, Media and Young Minds (Council on Communications and Media), Pediatrics 2016: AAP recommends no screen time for children under 18 months except video chat; heavy passive screen time reduces parent-child verbal interaction.
10. ASHA, Spoken Language Disorders: Language disorder prevalence is approximately 7-8% of children regardless of language background.
11. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), Speech and Language Developmental Milestones: Milestone norms for speech and language development in toddlers including 50-word benchmark at 24 months.
12. Zero to Three, Brain Development: Brain plasticity for language is highest under age 5, supporting the importance of early intervention timing.