If you've been searching "expressive language disorder," here's the parent-level version: it usually means a child understands more than they can say, and the real question isn't how to make your child talk right now, it's what your child is already communicating and what kind of modeling would make the next step easier. That framing protects your relationship with your child and gives an SLP, pediatrician, early intervention team, or school team better information to work with. Watch across several days, not one rough afternoon. Notice how your child gestures, points, imitates, plays pretend, responds to their name, handles frustration, uses scripts or AAC, and attempts sounds, and pay attention to whether they seem to understand more than they can express. A pattern across routines tells you far more than any single moment. For this week, pick one routine your child already goes through every day, and model one useful word, phrase, AAC button, or gesture inside it. Pause long enough to let your child respond in whatever form that takes. Count approximations, signs, points, scripts, or device use as real communication, and stop before things turn into a battle. One detail worth flagging: expressive language disorder needs to be told apart from apraxia and from autism, since the supports look different for each. If this seems to be part of a bigger pattern, it's worth asking for help sooner rather than later, whether that's a hearing check, an early intervention evaluation, a private SLP evaluation, a school-based evaluation, or a developmental assessment. Getting ahead of it isn't overreacting. It just means your child gets access to communication support when they need it. For more on related topics, the Parent Resources hub and the wider collection of parent guides are good starting points, and several individual pieces dig into pieces of this same picture: how ADHD overlaps with speech, what it's like being an autism dad, one family's account of how a daughter found her words, practical ideas for making speech practice work for an ADHD child, a parent's story about building an AI friend for his daughter, real accounts of late talkers who turned out fine, a closer look at receptive language delay, and how sensory processing connects to speech. Little Words is meant as educational support for practice at home. It isn't a medical device, an AAC replacement, or a stand-in for a licensed speech-language pathologist, pediatrician, early intervention program, school team, or developmental evaluation.