If you've been searching for what to do while waiting for speech therapy, here's the honest answer: you can't skip the line, but you can use the wait well. This page covers what the delay usually means, what to watch for in everyday routines, a few things worth trying this week, and when it's time to loop in an SLP, pediatrician, early intervention team, or school team.
The question worth asking isn't "how do I get my child talking right now?" It's "what is my child already communicating, and what would make the next step a little easier for them?" That shift keeps things low-pressure at home, and it also gives whoever eventually evaluates your child much better information to work with.
Watch across several different moments rather than judging one rough afternoon. Pay attention to gestures, pretend play, and whether your child understands more than they can actually say out loud, along with things like frustration levels, scripts, or AAC use if that's part of your child's world. A pattern that shows up across bath time, meals, and play matters far more than one bad stretch on a hard day.
For this week, pick a routine that already happens daily, no need to invent a new one. Model a single useful word, phrase, sign, or AAC button inside that routine, then pause long enough for your child to respond in whatever form that takes: a sound, a point, a sign, a script, a device tap. Accept that as communication. And if the moment starts turning into a standoff, stop. It's not worth the fight.
A few concrete techniques worth testing at home this week: reading aloud with real pauses built in, expectant pauses where you simply wait, parallel talk (narrating what your child is doing as they do it), sportscasting their play, offering choices of two instead of open-ended questions, pairing a sign with the word, and using whatever your child is already obsessed with as your way in.
If this feels like part of a bigger pattern rather than a passing stage, it's worth asking for help sooner rather than later. That might mean a hearing check, an early intervention evaluation, a private SLP evaluation, a school-based evaluation, or a broader developmental assessment. Asking early isn't overreacting. It just means your child gets access to support sooner.
For more on this, the Speech Therapy at Home hub has broader guidance, and the Parent Guides section covers related situations in depth, including how ADHD can show up alongside speech delay, how anxiety in autistic toddlers affects speech, what happens when autism and apraxia occur together, how autism and sensory processing disorder interact, and approach-specific guides for autistic children, bilingual children with speech delay, children with ADHD, and children with apraxia.
Important: Little Words is educational support for home practice. It isn't a medical device, an AAC replacement, or a substitute for a licensed speech-language pathologist, pediatrician, early intervention program, school team, or developmental evaluation.
