Another tale of sibs with different learn-to-talk experiences. I don’t remember any of this for myself firsthand, but parents told me/us the story later.
I was kid #1 and verbal well early vs the “typical”. Went pretty quickly from noises to syllables to words to noun-verb toddler sentences and never looked back. As you can see 60+ years later I’m still full of crap I think needs saying long-windedly whether you’re interested or not.
Kid #2 was a boy 2 yr 6 months younger than I who didn’t say a word for a long time. Anyhow, they were worried, had the pediatrician involved, etc. This was early 1960s and the rest of the resources & interventions hadn’t been invented yet. It got real late with him and still no syllables, much less words.
Kid #3, also a boy, comes along 2 years 3 months later. And is syllable-izing at about the normal pace, before #2 has done much of anything pre-verbal. #2 grunts and cries & waves and pays attention and can communicate his desires with pantomime. So they know he can make noises and can think. But he isn’t / can’t communicate with anything even remotely resembling speech. Parents going ape.
One day when kid #2 is almost age 4 he’s sitting there while Mom phones the pediatrician with more worries about this unfolding disaster. He pipes up with “Don’t worry, Mom! I’m fine.” With clear diction and appropriate inflection. She damn near fainted.
Once the log jam was broken he was age typical, including better than normal vocabulary almost immediately. He did fine in school, has a degree in a difficult topic, speaks 2 languages expertly and hobbles along in 2 more, and is an eloquent writer and speaker. His work is much pithier than my wordy mental diarrhea.
IOW, this joke has a basis in real life.
Interestingly enough, he was always the most empathetic of the 3 kids by far. And it was a strong burst of on-the-spot empathy for scared-to-death Mom that broke his verbal logjam. I’ve always thought that was significant.