Hear hear! When my younger brother was about 2 1/2 all he did was grunt and point. Because we were so close I somehow knew what it was he wanted. When our mother relunctantly took him to a doctor he told her to stop me from interpreting for him. Which I did under fear of death…:dubious: It worked. He started talking and during later school testing was found to be at the genius level.
My son was kind of like that (not as bad) and I worried when he was 3 that he wasn’t telling me complex stories like his friend was. But he’s a smart kid. A really, really smart kiddo. He didn’t start talking until he was being taken care of by someone that wasn’t me. (I wondered if it was because he HAD to talk.)
And now everyone comments about how he talks like an adult. His vocabulary, structuring, and his second language learning (Hebrew) is more advanced than the other 44 first graders. When my son was your child’s age, I was told to have him evaluated for autism.
So…just keep doing what you’re doing and remember, as long as your child is following complex commands and communicate, you are very likely going to be A-OK. And if this seems to carry over into reading (reads slower at first), don’t fret. It’ll come. Some kids…they just do things in their own time.
Being a parent is awesome. You’re doing a good job.
P.S. My son’s first word was “poop”. His fifth word was “shit”. So watch your mouth. 
Kids listen to what you say!
Can you “hear” my applause? I’m clapping madly.
The son of a friend wasn’t still talking at 2 1/2, something which worried his mother (a primary school teacher) but not his father (a musician by love and carpenter by economy). The kid would hum but not talk.
The kid’s first word was hipopótamo. His grandmother was showing him a picture book, calling the dog a “woof-woof”, the cat a “meow-meow”, etc. When she called the hippopotamus a “tótamo”, this apparently was just one misnaming too many: the kid grabbed the book away and angrily corrected her.
He still doesn’t talk much, hums whenever he’s not talking and stops humming when he’s playing Daddy’s trumpet.
Hehe… that’s one of the (few) words that my son is able to squeak out fairly often. Too bad that it hasn’t translated into him being interested in potty training! :smack:
I was wondering that too - with two older siblings, did they take over as “translators” for him so he doesn’t see the need to talk?
My son had a similar experience. Someone was looking through an animal book with him and said, frog, and Judah says, “NO! RED EYED TREE FROG!” 
We told my kid’s speech therapists that we knew she had done a good job after we yelled “shut up!”
While there is no need to be concerned (he is probably just fine) you should probably try to be conscious of his lack of speech. We have done speech therapy with our little guy (when he came to us at the age of five, he had no consonants, constantly mixed up vowels and, as a result of no one understanding him, just wouldn’t talk). The biggest thing we learned from our speech therapist was to make working on speech part of daily life. We would (and will) stop whatever is going on to take a moment to correct his speech or to help him get his mouth around harder words.
Now, we just make him repeat himself if he isn’t putting in the effort to say things correctly. That pretty much only happens now when he is excited or tired.
(We have now moved on to grammatical errors. The past tense trips up both of the children.)
ETA: It’s only been two years and he now has all consonants except ‘r’ and the vowel mixups are going away quite quickly as he learns to read.
My child has severe apraxia (a speech disorder, not a delay). She is seven. At three, you should probably be getting a diagnosis. Ask the therapist what steps he/she suggests you take. Depending on where you live, age 3 is when the schools take over from Early Intervention.
By far the most important thing you can do is find a talented SLP. It makes all the difference. Therapy should be fast-paced and engaging for the child and informative for you.
Another idea: Try reading things like Mother Goose rhymes to him, and stopping right before the last word to see if he’ll say it.
Let me second finding a great SLP. And you’ll know it’s a great one because it just magically works. We found a fantastic one completely by accident. The first lesson I learned about 10 tricks on how to communicate better.
Another key is if your child is communicating? Lack of speech is one thing and lack of communication is a whole more challenging level.
In our case, when the therapist explains the need for constant repetition, it could mean thousands of times before it clicks. At least in Serena’s case. But when she gets it, she gets it.
My DS with multiple delays in childhood didn’t have much to say at all until 2 1/2, when he began talking suddenly and whole books worth.
His first talking episode involved his repeating the whole of “Pie Rats, Ahoy” by Scarry- a book he loved and had me read 9 times in a row once- in the car during a road trip.
One thing that I found helpful was another mother who told me “When he’s 15, no one is going to say ‘he acts like such a 14 1/2 year old.’” He has a diagnosis of Asperger’s (heck, who doesn’t these days), but is otherwise a normal, if quirky, teen.
True that. My (now) seven year old girl had one hell of a time with some consonant sounds. W, L, and R sound would all slur together and make her hard to understand. We had her in a year of speech therapy prior to starting kindergarten and she showed enough progress that she made it into school even though she was the youngest in her class (she made the cutoff by 11 days).
Even with her teachers working with her she was understood fine but always a bit slurry. But in the last few months at about age 7 1/2 she’s suddenly made huge gains in pronunciation on her own. She hasn’t worked with anyone for years and her consonants are more clear than ever and her frustration with having to repeat herself is going down. She did something or hit some milestone and there you go. I admit to being amazed.
I thought I might revive this thread, to update, and indeed, continue to freak out amongst friends.
He is now 4 1/2, and has made some small progress, but is still functionally “mute”.
He goes to a special pre-K for kids with speech disorders, with pullout speech therapy in addition. And still, nothing much happens.
He can learn. He hears everything. He just can’t seem to make his mouth talk. He tested at the lower end of a normal IQ, though I seriously question how accurate that could be, given how difficult it is to test a kid that’s non-verbal.
I am literally worried sick about his future. All of the available options suck. Either he’ll prove that he’s smart enough to be mainstreamed into a regular kindergarten class next year, albeit with an electronic device to do his talking for him. Or, the powers that be can decide he’s better off in a “special” class at a different school for kids with intellectual disabilities.
I have trouble sleeping. If I think about it too much I break down into tears, and if I dwell on the vision of my child, struggling and suffering through an uncertain future, I feel actually nauseated and unspeakably depressed. I have almost no one I can talk to about this. Everyone always loves to chime in with some brilliant method they know or read about that will “fix” the problem, when really, I just need a hug and some reassurance that somehow things will work out.
((((Sarabellum1976))))
Oh, man, you have my sympathy. As for reassurance, I can only say mother-worries are usually much, much worse than whatever ends up happening. And that youngsters can be amazingly adaptive.
Do you have a diagnosis? Can he sign? I ask because that would show that it was a speech control problem and not a language problem. Although if he can use a speech box, that would show that he can use language.
Good wishes for the future for you and Son1976.
I don’t really have anything helpful to say, but I feel for you.
My daughter had a speech delay identified in preschool. It was not as severe as what you’ve described, but I spent many, many sleepless nights worrying about her future. Luckily she has now caught up, but I remember very clearly how worried and anxious I felt, and I’m so sorry you’re experiencing that.
I’m sure you’re doing all you are able to for him. That’s really all you can do. Maybe he will catch up with his speech, maybe he won’t. It may be, though, that he has other gifts and abilities that you haven’t yet identified and that may ensure that he has a good future ahead of him. If he’s otherwise intelligent, he may find other ways to compensate for his uncommunicativeness.
My younger daughter was delayed, not to the extent your son is, and my wife took her to sign language lessons at a local school for the deaf. The reason was that it gave her a way of communicating better.
Her problem was a seriously screwed up jaw (we got told this when she was born) which took massive surgery to fix when she was older.
She eventually grew out of the problem, but signing was a big help back then. It is also a useful skill.
Can he do sign language? Or is that a stupid idea?
Is it too early to start him on sign language?