You’re Not Behind (Yet) — This Matters More Than Words Ep 139

If your toddler isn’t talking much yet, this episode is for you.

Many parents worry about words — how many, how clear, how often. But long before speech shows up reliably, something else is being built underneath.

In this episode, Erin Hyer — speech-language pathologist with over 35 years of experience — explains what actually matters before words take off, and why so many well-intentioned parents miss it in today’s busy, overstimulating world.

You’ll learn:

• Why talking and understanding develop together — but don’t always show up evenly
• What’s really happening in your child’s brain when language feels “slow”
• How listening, regulation, rhythm, and play create the conditions speech grows out of
• Why modern life quietly works against development — and what parents can do upstream
• How to support strong foundations without pressure, panic, or labels

This episode isn’t about diagnosing your child.

It’s about helping you see what matters first — so you don’t wait too long, and you don’t worry too soon.

If you’re ready to move beyond milestones and into meaningful support, you’re in the right place.

👉 Book a Discovery Call

📥 Free resource:
The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

Disclaimer: 

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

Transcript

Erin: 0:00

I don't look at it as children as being fragile I look at it as their systems are still immature and efficient. We need to give them Hello and welcome to Talking Toddlers where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. our goal is to develop clarity because in this modern world, it's truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction, to never give up, to tap into everyday activities, so your child stays on track. He's not falling behind, he's thriving. Through your guidance, we know that true learning starts at home. So let's get started. Many parents need to hear this, especially if you've been quietly worrying. You are not behind. At least not yet. And I want you to really hear that because worry has a way of tightening everything, your body, your thinking, even how you show up with your child. There is something most parents miss, and when it's missed for too long, that's when children actually do fall behind. Not because parents didn't care or weren't trying, but because no one ever explained what really matters early on. Here's the part that often gets overlooked. Talking and understanding don't develop the way most parents think they do. We tend to look for words. We listen for answers. We wait for proof, and that makes sense. Words are visible, right? They're measurable. We can auditorily hear them and count them. They actually feel reassuring. But long before words show up long before your child can answer a question or name a toy, his or her brain is building something. Words grow out of. And it's not a skill. It's not a milestone. It's a system. A system designed for listening, organizing sound, staying regulated, auditory differences, and then using language and social interaction with other human beings to support and build that system. And here's the tricky part. That system can look fine on the outside while still being very vulnerable. Underneath a healthy, a normal, typical, average child still is working hard underneath, even though on the outside they appear to be developing. So when parents say things like, oh, he understands everything, he just won't talk yet, or she says a few words, but I'm not sure she really gets it. Both those statements can be partly true. And yet at the same time, still miss what's actually happening. Today's episode isn't about whether your child should or shouldn't be talking. It isn't even about how many words they have or don't have. It's about learning how to see what's being built before words take off before they even begin to appear. So you don't wait too long, nor do you worry in the meanwhile. And if you're new here, I think this is a good time to introduce myself. I'm Erin Hier. I'm a speech language pathologist with well over 35 years working with babies and toddlers and preschoolers. And the parents, often after families were already worried, frustrated, uncertain. And the truth is, many parents were tired of being told, oh, just wait and see. What those years in clinical therapy and clinical work taught me was this, most of the challenges I was asked to fix or support later on could have been prevented earlier. Not with therapy techniques, but with better conditions at home. And wait, before you jump outta your seat, I want you to hear what I mean by that. Those challenges weren't about bad parenting. They were about missing information in a very noisy, very modern world. Parents were doing what they were told was normal, what was convenient, or perhaps what was popular at that time. And when you don't know what actually supports development across the ages, it's easy, actually, completely understandable to make choices that work against it without even realizing it. There's nothing magical about a therapy room, and I can say that because I just spent the last 35 plus years in one, and there's nothing that a therapist does that can't be supported or replicated every day in real life when you, the parents, mom and dad and the grandparents understand what actually helps your child grow. That's why this podcast focus is going upstream. Before true developmental delays appear before you begin to worry, not to blame parents or to point the finger of whose responsibility it was or wasn't, but to give you information you are never honestly given before, and to support you as you try things that might feel a little less trendy, a little less convenient, and often less familiar. But I assure you what we share here is far more aligned with how children are designed to develop. Because when foundations are strong, most children don't need rescuing. Later on. And before we go, I want to invite you into this conversation. If this podcast has helped you slow down, think differently, or feel more confident as a parent, I'd be so grateful if you would take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify, whichever platform you favor, because it really does help other parents find this show. And if you're watching on YouTube, I'd love for you to share in the comments. Answering this question, what's one way you give your child or your family more room to breathe during the day? It might be something small. It, it might even be something that you don't think is very important, but I assure you those breathable moments matter a lot more than you give it credit. So now let's jump into today's conversation. One of the hardest things I think, for modern parents is to grasp that the brain doesn't wire itself through more stimulation. It wires itself through awareness, attention, imitation, repetition, pattern identification, and recovery. From before birth actually, your baby's auditory system, right? Their ears, their ability to hear sound, but the auditory system has begun forming not with language, but with sound. They can hear internal sounds like the heartbeat around 18 weeks, and then begin to build their capacity and hear muffled external sounds by around 24 weeks gestation a. All of that makes them build a, a more refined auditory system. And so by 28, 29 weeks, they begin to recognize voices and distinguish speech, especially through consistent sound exposure of the mother's voice. And that makes sense, right? You're connected, but here's what the brain is actually learning. It's learning what sound is right, identifying the human voice different from all other sounds. Where does the sound come from? Which sounds are being repeated because if I find patterns, then that seems to make a difference. That's what matters most, and which sounds belong to people versus the environment. So in that first year of life, your baby is doing enormous work, just making sense of the auditory world around them. They're matching sounds to faces, sound to movement, and sounds to emotion. Right. They can recognize when the pitch goes up or down or bigger or smaller. There's different feelings that go with that. That's why babies are drawn toward faces, right? It's part of our wiring. We're wired to recognize. The, the human voice, and then we're wired to recognize faces. And now our job in that first several months is to put those together. That's why they watch our mouths. They watch our eyes. They're wired to do that, but it's our responsibility working with them in real time to put meaning to that. That's why a familiar voice will calm them and an unfamiliar voice. Well, you know, make them hesitant. By the end of that first year, listening is just beginning to become more intentional and more social. Right? They, they're aware of a lot of these changes in those first 6, 8, 10, 12 months, but now they're having more understanding and therefore they can engage more purposefully. And this auditory processing system is certainly not finished by that first birthday. It's just beginning to become organized enough to start coordinating it with other systems. Now I can move in this space and vocalize, and now I'm putting, I can hear you. As we play together and processing, putting those pieces together, and this part is important. Listening doesn't mature all at once. It becomes more efficient, slowly over time through practice, and the brain has to learn how to filter out all this background noise and then hold sound in that frontal lobe, that short-term memory, and then pull it back into long-term memory and then retrieve it. When things are taking place in front of them and they start to compare and contrast patterns and all of this allows them then to have some, some autonomy in it and begin to predict what comes next, right? Whether it's just our speech, or our speech and our actions, all of that has to happen before their verbal talking. Their speech becomes more reliable. And, and used efficiently. So while you as the parent are typically waiting for words or trying to pull words out of their vocal play, the brain is often still very busy. Learning how to receive language efficiently and how to code it, how to interpret it, how to store it, and prioritize it. So that's a lot of language learning taking place. Now, this was one of the biggest turning points in my work early on because I began noticing that some children were working so hard just to listen. That the truth was they didn't have much left to actually respond with, and I could see it in their body language, in, in their, their presence in, in their ability to look at me and listen. Just keeping up with sound, just figuring out what was being said. Just staying regulated enough to follow along. That's all they had. That alone took all their mental energy. So when it was actually their turn to talk, there wasn't anything left. There was nothing in reserve, no extra capacity to organize a thought or to retrieve words, and put words together. No space. The their, their bandwidth was spent. So from the outside, a lot of people, parents, teachers, sitters, doctors, therapists, they look at that and think it's a choice. But from the inside, the system is already maxed out. Adults, we, this happens to us from time to time when we're tired, exhausted, even, or overstimulated. You might be able to understand what somebody is saying in the moment, but you, you're not putting it into long-term memory. You are not really contemplating about it and able to respond because that just takes too much energy. You're just too spent. But toddlers don't have language to understand that, let alone express that to us. Their system just goes quiet. We could say, you know what, I, I, I just, I can't focus right now. Can we get back to this later on when I have some, some rest? Right? But your toddler doesn't know how to do. Even understand that feeling. So this is why I think silence doesn't mean that they won't or that they're being resistant. It often means that I can't do it yet. I don't have enough bandwidth. I'm still. Lining up the the connectors, right? Once you understand that, I think once any adult, whether you're living and raising them or working with them from the outside, once we understand that everyday life starts to make more sense and why? It, we can take a look at some of the, the elements, the variables that impact, right, some things that get in the way. This is why background noise matters, why screens can complicate things, and why rushing questions can really shut kids down, and why rhythm and routine and predictability help support it all. So it starts to make sense if you know that they're being, their energy load is being spent just processing it. And so I don't look at it as children as being fragile because I look at it as their systems are still immature and efficient. We need to give them that space. And so when listening does become easier, smoother, more efficient, then talking has room to grow. And so it's not that we don't expect words to appear at 12 and 16 and 18 and 24 months, but. It's not going to appear readily if the understanding, the listening, the receptive language still takes a lot of the bandwidth. So the truth is, if we look back, even a generation or two children didn't live in a constant state of stimulation, which is taking their energy. If we look back, evenings were slower, right? Light faded naturally, both as we rose in the morning and went down at night, families ate together. Stories were shared in in quiet times, right? Games were more simple. There wasn't a lot of background noise. Those quieter transitions weren't just comforting. They were neurologically protective, especially for these young 1, 2, 3, 4, and five year olds. They gave their brain time to integrate the day to transition, right, to integrate sounds around them, and then the. Integration of emotion and connection with them. It, it started to make sense. Modern life has removed many of those pauses and without them, I think the brain stays in more of a reactive mode. Right. It's, it's on alert because it never gets time to, to sit in it. Process it and store it, and I think that this is a good place for me to mention. What play is because you and I will often contrast the word play with work, right? That is our opposites, but to your babies and toddlers and preschoolers, play is just their life. They don't know the difference. Play isn't something your children do after learning, even though that's how we perceive it and structure their day, right? Play is where learning happens. Heck, taking a bath or doing laundry, like I always say here is, is playtime to them, but is also learning, but movement in their play, right? Their activities throughout the day organizes their attention, and then rhythm supports that timing. The body. The brain is our timing. Machine repetition strengthens memory. And then joy and pleasure, and, and comfort releases that tension. And, and I think that's the, the, the environment that we want to create. And I, I do want to mention what, what is often discussed nowadays about big feelings, right? That we hear a lot of it on social media and there's a lot of specialists in this area, but sometimes what looks like emotional overload or those big feelings is really. A system that hasn't had enough space or time to build strength and flexibility and solidness, right. it, it, it's just like our, our body where. If we have strength and flexibility, you know, think of yoga, think of tai chi. Think of any sport or activity, even riding a bicycle, right? We have to be strong enough to, to hold ourselves up there and flexible enough to move in real time and, and find that flow. Well, the brain needs both too. And so when we're looking at. Talking and listening. When listening is inefficient or immature, then regulation suffers because they're not able to process and understand. And when regulation suffers, then emotions spill over. Those are those big feelings. And, and I look at it not as a character or behavioral issue. Heck, it's not even a personality style, which a lot of people assume it's a capacity issue, especially when you're looking at toddlers and preschoolers. I think that's a big distinction. So before we wrap up, let, me try to pull this together just so we have a, a complete cohesive idea of what listening and understanding has to be before they can actually use talking speech uh, as their output, right? So this is what I want you to try to remember. Words don't show up on their own. They literally grow out of a system. A young developing system that tells us they're beginning to decode enough to then be able to practice and use it in real time with intention. And that system is built through everyday interactions. Not pressure, not. Drill and practice, but in in real life situations, if listening takes too much effort, then talking will often take a backseat. And I've seen this hundreds of time, rhythm play or engagement, right? And predictability routines give the brain room. To organize right, to put it in files, to have a system to make sense of it, and then retrieve it smoothly. You don't, you, as the mom and dad and grandparents, you don't need to do more. You need to do what matters first and, and honestly, that's why I believe so strongly in prevention, not because children are fragile or unable. Because development takes time and it takes responsive engagement to build, to nurture. When you, as the parent, the grandparent, mom, dad, when you understand what supports growth, then you can change the outcomes long before anybody starts to discuss labels or or to identify issues. If your child isn't talking much yet, this isn't a message about panic and it's not a message about wait and see, either those two opposing positions don't benefit anybody. This is an invitation to slow down, to look more closely, to support what is still becoming what is still blossoming. To, to analyze or to, to critically look at your daily rhythm. Be honest with yourself, not because your child is not capable, but are you giving him or her the space to hone those skills. And I truly believe that you're not behind yet you, because now you know what matters more and you can e evaluate this situation and make a better judgment. And if as you're listening, you're thinking to yourself, hmm. I don't wanna wait until something is wrong. I want to understand how to support my child better today. Now, that's exactly why I offer the discovery calls. These calls aren't about therapy or evaluating or even diagnosing. Your child is or isn't, right? It's really a chance for us to talk about what's heavy for you right now. Where are your routines, your rhythms, how have you created your environment? And then decide if one-to-one coaching fits. For your, your needs and could be helpful for you, because this work really isn't about fixing your child. It's about how do you lead, how do you set the stage, and how do you support development in everyday life? The goal, honestly, is about prevention, about staying upstream and supporting strong foundations while the brain is still incredibly malleable incredibly adaptable. I am honored to have met so many of you in the last couple of months, and I'm excited as my openings are filling up to meet more and more of you. So if this episode resonated with you and you're wanting help, then I'd love to support you to do that, you'll find the link on the discovery. Calls down below and whether or not we ever get the chance to work together one-to-one. I am so grateful for spending this time for you showing up and being open to learning. It says a lot about who you're striving to be as the beautiful parent. I know your days are full and these early years matter, so God bless and I'll see you in the next talking toddlers.