He'll Talk When He's Ready — Why Waiting Isn't a Plan Ep 159

Everyone keeps telling you not to worry. "He'll talk when he's ready." 

You smile, you nod — but somewhere underneath, your gut isn't buying it.

Trust that. Because "ready" is the wrong word — and "wait and see" is not the gentle, neutral choice it pretends to be.

After almost forty years with toddlers and the families raising them, Erin Hyer, speech language pathologist, takes on the second big myth worried parents are handed: that talking just shows up on its own, once a child decides he's ready. 

It doesn't. Children don't talk when they're ready — they talk when they're built for it.

In this episode, Erin unpacks why waiting feels like the kind, patient thing to do — and what it quietly costs. She walks through the difference between "ready" and "built," the honest truth about which late talkers really catch up (and why no test can tell you which group your child is in), the third option between panic and waiting, and how to find where your child is on the path right now.

You'll walk away understanding: → Why "he'll talk when he's ready" sounds kind — but isn't neutral → "Ready" vs. "built": what actually comes first → The third option between panic and doing nothing → The real story on "catching up" — and why it can't be predicted → What to watch for, and where your child is right now → The one thing waiting spends that you can never get back

Share this with the mom who's been told to relax — and can't shake the feeling that now is the time to pay attention.

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Talking Toddlers | Erin Hyer, M.S. CCC-SLP Early intervention. 

Prevention over remediation. Real information for the first three years.

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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.

📩 Questions: contact@HyerLearning.com
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

Transcript

Erin 0:01

here's a thing that nobody tells you: wait and see, it's not free. It sounds gentle, it sounds patient and wise, but wait and see is not neutral. Do nothing option, that's a decision. And the thing it spends is the one thing you can never get back, time. the mom who says, "Something doesn't feel right is usually onto something. Not always, but usually. Your intuition is not the enemy of good parenting. It is, the best instrument you've got. God gave us this this ability to see into our children.

Speaker 5 0:50

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. We're gonna cover all of that, but here, 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.

Erin 1:32

Everyone keeps telling you not to worry. He'll talk when he's ready." So you smile, and you nod, and somewhere underneath, your gut just isn't buying it. Good. Trust that, because ready is the wrong word, and in this episode, I'm gonna give you the right one. First, I want to welcome you. I'm Erin Hyer, a speech-language pathologist, and I have spent nearly 40 years on the floor with babies and toddlers and the families raising them. So hear me when I tell you, children don't talk when they're ready. They talk when they're built for it. Those are two completely different things, and the difference changes everything you do next, because, "He'll talk when he's ready," sounds more like patience. It comes from people who love you, say, your mother-in-law, or maybe your pediatrician with one hand on the doorknob as he's walking out the door. Maybe from a friend who has that story, "Oh, don't worry, my cousin didn't talk till she was 3, and she turned out just fine." But wait and see is not the gentle, neutral choice it pretends to be, and I'll show you what it actually costs most families. This is what we'll walk through today: why waiting is the wrong default, what it really means to build your child toward talking, and a third option nobody really offers you, the one besides panic and do nothing at all. And I have a free guide that maps out the whole foundation, and I'll point you to that as well at the end, so stick around. If you have a one, two, or three-year-old and you're not quite sure where your child lands on this whole talking journey, this is for you. And if you're holding a baby or trying to keep up with a brand-new crawler, stick around as well because this one is really about a single choice every parent makes without realizing it. Do I wait or do I build? And the earlier you choose build, The easier every bit of this will get for you. When your toddler isn't talking or talking enough, there are two big myths that get handed to most moms, and the truth is both of them are lukewarm advice that really serves no one. Myth number one is just talk to him more. Narrate all day and it will click. It won't. I actually made a whole case for that last week in episode 158, so go back and listen to that. They go hand-in-hand, but not necessarily in order. So let's continue with this conversation. So today, we're after what I call myth number two, the one that traps even more parents, I think, and it sounds even gentler, So let me say the lines out loud, because they come in different forms, And I'm sure you've heard of them. "He'll talk when he was ready," like I said. "All kids develop at their own pace." "Don't compare." "Every child is different." my nephew didn't talk till he was three, and he's perfectly fine." And there's always that big famous story, maybe it's a relative or some genius you heard or some book that you read about a late talker who actually turned out to be brilliant. And you cling to it just a little because it's the version where everything is okay and you don't have to worry or do anything differently. And I want to be gentle here, but I also want to be incredibly straightforward because honesty is the best place to land. Do those kids exist? The ones that didn't talk till they were three or four or five and now are completely fine? Maybe. But I'll tell you something, In nearly 40 years of practice, I have never met one personally, and honestly, neither have most of my closest colleagues. We talk about this all the time. It's actually a thorn in our side. I cannot identify a case where a child was not talking and then woke up on their third or fourth birthday and all of a sudden became verbal. Now, I'm a researcher, so there are always outliers somewhere in the data. So sure, maybe there's a rare child who takes his sweet time and then ends up to be just fine. Maybe you know that child, but that is the anomaly. It's the exception, and you cannot bet your son or your daughter on the exception. I'm not speaking to that one in a million case. I'm speaking to the great, big, juicy, messy middle where most of your kids actually live. Here's the real pain underneath all of it. You're being told to relax by people who love you and by people with credentials, and yet your gut is telling you to do something, do something different. And so now on top of your worry, you kind of feel like a little crazy person, right? Maybe a little guilty. Like maybe you're the anxious one or the helicopter mom, the mom who just won't let her kid be a kid. Just chill. But I want to take that off of your shoulders now, because that tension that you feel, I don't think that's anxiety. I think you need to look at it as information. That intuition, that information, can lead you to do things better. Because here's a thing that nobody tells you: wait and see, it's not free. It sounds gentle, it sounds patient and wise, but wait and see is not neutral. Do nothing option, that's a decision. And the thing it spends is the one thing you can never get back, time. Inside the most wide open, fastest wiring window your child will ever experience, those first three years, that window does not stay open. And every month you spend waiting is a month you're not building that foundation. During that stretch of time is where it's the easiest. God designed it to be open so you can acquire so many developmental skills, talking, listening, sleeping, rolling over, crawling, climbing, all of it. That's the part that breaks my heart after all these years, because so many of these kids, the waiting didn't help. It just gave time for that gap to actually get bigger And I have to tell you about something that made this worse, not better. A few years ago, in 2022, the CDC milestone checklists that your pediatrician follow and uses got revised. And I want to explain this carefully because it really matters. The old checklists were built on the 50th percentile, meaning the age by which half of the children hit a certain milestone. The new ones were pushed out to the 75th percentile, the age by which three-quarters of children would hit a certain milestone. Now, here's the fair part, because when we asked, this is what they said. The people, the CDC, the group that makes these decisions, who, who made these changes, said their goal was to actually push against the wait and see, to give you, the parents, and maybe the professionals, clearer signals. so I'll grant the intention was there, but you need to hear the other side, the one a lot of us in the speech and early child development world, we raised our hands against. Our national organization, my national organization, ASHA, American Speech and Hearing Association, came out with some very real concerns, because speech pathologists were not a part of this review, and that moving the bar later could mean kids got flagged later and then referred out later. And you, the parents, are sitting there with no clear direction. So when you hear, "Oh, the guidelines say that's still in the normal range," I want you to know that the range itself shifted. They moved the goalposts. And I'm not willing to let a moving definition of what normal is or what the age range is, I don't want y- that to push against what your experience, what you're experiencing in your day-to-day life, what you see in real time with your child. You see your 20-month-old or 24-month-old or 28-month-old struggling. And so I have to hold the line here. The expectations I learned 40 years ago, the ones that held true for decades, I still hold true to. And the vast majority of colleagues that I know, we hold the line there, not to scare you, but to really give you the facts, to, to be clear and honest so then you have better information to make better choices. So let's step back and go back to that word and fix it, because the word is really the problem. The word ready. He'll do something when he's ready. He'll talk when he's ready. Listen to what that actually implies. It makes it sound like it's a choice, like he'll get around to it when he feels like it. The way that maybe you and I might say, "Oh, I'll go to the gym when I'm ready," or, "I'll start that project when I feel like it." That's a grown-up making a conscious decision on her own schedule. I'll do it when I'm ready. That is not what's happening inside your baby or your toddler or even your preschooler, a child who's brand new to this world, who's wiring each and every moment that he's awake and when they're sleeping, right? They're new to this whole human connection, building language, moving their body, trying to understand what the heck is going on, new to talking. That child, they're not sitting there deciding whether or not to verbally communicate. He is not waiting for the mood to strike him. Because here is what I have believed and lived for 40 years in the clinical world. We are biologically driven to communicate. It's not a preference. It's not a personality. It's wired into us as human beings. It's in our DNA. It's how God designed us. Communication is our very first lifeline in this world, and it is the thing that sets us apart from every other creature on the planet. We communicate with intention. We plan, we imagine, we problem solve, we think. And all of that is because we have language So in fact, your baby was born wired to learn any language on Earth. In, in my speech world, right, in my speech community, we refer to newborns as citizens of the world, born and wired, ready and able to decode and learn anything; Mandarin, French, German, any of them. But somewhere around that eight month, under healthy, healthy conditions, his native language starts to pull ahead of all the other languages of the world, and the ability to pick up any other language quietly starts to recede in the background, right? Gets pruned away. And there are many, many studies on this. So these first three years, this is when your child is the most open he'll ever be, by design, to master his primary native language, or two languages. It's fine. That works just as well. But they're the most open. It's the easiest to master. That is not a choice. That's a window, by design. So when we say, "He'll talk when he's ready," I think gets it backwards. He's not choosing to wait. He's wired to communicate, and the window when it comes easiest is right now So here's the part underneath all of this. He is born with the drive, and he is born with the capacity, but neither one pours itself in, Brains are built, not born. They're born with the capacity, but we have to finish the job. Your baby comes still under construction, and the wiring gets built through experience and through connection, through you, the family dynamics. The drive is his, the building is yours, the adult's. So that's the real trap in, "He'll talk when he's ready." Yes, he will talk when the foundation is there. That part's true. But the foundation does not build itself and will not build itself while we sit back and wait for him to get ready. You build it. Readiness isn't something that we wait for. It's something you and me, the leaders in our family, we make happen. And that opens a door that almost nobody points you to, because the culture hands you exactly two options, and I think they're both wrong. They don't serve you Option number one, you panic. You rush out, you demand an evaluation, you get on a wait list, you start to worry, and you treat your toddler like he has a problem to be fixed. That's option number one. Option number two, let's wait and see. Do nothing, trust the process, love him, be with him, but, you know, it's mostly hope and pray. I'm here to show you option number three, the one that's nobody's really focused on. Watch closely and build. Make informed action every day in your home, in your lifestyle, and you can start today, no matter where you are on this continuum. If you have a brand-new baby and you're not sure, or if you have a two-year-old who's not hitting the mark yet, it doesn't matter. You do not have to choose between panicking and doing nothing. That was always a false position. So let me give you some real markers so that you have something solid to stand on. And notice there's a lot of wiggle room here. It's not wait and see and let him do it on his own, but there's wiggle room that you can play in. So somewhere around that first birthday, give or take, you will see s- some of the true words start popping, aside mama and dada, right? Dog, cup, bed, monkey, whatever the new words are. By the second birthday, 24 months of age, only 12 months later, you're looking for at least 50 words that he uses on his own. And yes, I say he a lot. It's, it serves both boys and girls, he or h- her, right? But 50 words, that's the floor. That's not the goal, right? The average is more like 200 words, but the baseline is 50. And right around there, around, around that 24-month mark, he should also be starting to put two words together. And I don't mean all gone or bye bye or night night. I mean a noun and an action, or a noun and an adjective actually bumped together to make a new concept, to share a new idea. Truck broke. Daddy drive. Doggy sleep. Two ideas joined together on his own. So hear me, there's that wiggle room, right? A few weeks here, maybe a month there. Kids are not robots. It's not linear. But the wiggle room is in weeks. It's not a year. It's not a giant gaping hole that we just keep deciding to ignore or waiting for him to feel like it, And here's the question that I can feel forming in your head right now. But don't most of them just catch up? Because lots of people will say that, and you deserve clarity here, so let me walk you through it. The first thing to notice is that the answer is all over the map, because it depends on the child and the circumstances. So when we only measure vocabulary, yes, that's true. The vast majority of those late talkers will catch up by kindergarten when we look at vocabulary alone. And so some studies will say about 70% will catch up in the vocabulary range by the time they hit kindergarten. That means 30% won't. But if we measure deeper language, real grammar, complex sentences, putting thoughts together, telling stories, answering why questions, and that number falls down to a third or fewer, meaning the numbers flip. When we only measure vocabulary, 70% hit the mark by the time they enter kindergarten. But if we look deeper than that, 30% will hit that normal range, but 70% will not. Same children, wildly different answer. If you're only looking at vocabulary, sure, that's the easy way out. But as a diagnostician, I spent 40 years testing deeply. What does their language processing look like? How does this relate to other five-year-olds? How will he do in a classroom? That alone tells you this is not a simple question or simple answer. And because I have been working from the outside and trying to deal with the system, they typically will only measure vocabulary because it's easier And honestly, it's a way for them to keep their caseloads down. That's the truth. So with that in mind, I cannot skip over two important notes. First There is absolutely no test, no checklist, no expert out there who can tell you which group your child falls in. So if he's slow to talk at two or at 30 months, I can't tell you whether he will catch up in vocabulary or not. Whether he'll have deep, rich language skills or not. There's no way to measure which camp your child falls in. So we can't discriminate and say, "Oh, he needs help. She'll be just fine." We can genuinely not predict that, never have been able to do that, and I don't see that in the near future, right? It's, it's really a coin toss. Secondly, average on a kindergarten screen is not the same as he's fine. A lot of kids who look like they even catch up in vocabulary by kindergarten still quietly struggle with the harder stuff, and that's, that's what I was saying, that if you dig deeper, they have problems with higher order language processing, the grammar, the structure, why questions. And what typically happens is it will surface later, and we'll just put a different label on it. We'll call it academic issues when it started as slow speech and language development. It's all the same thing We just play this semantics game, right? They're early speech and language problems if they're two or three, and then they become language-based learning problems once they hit the academic arena, right? Our systems are designed to wait until a child fails before they'll move forward to test. That's another part of the struggle parents face. They faced it 40 years ago when I first started, and they certainly face it today. So it- it's complex. It's nuanced. It's layered. And that is the whole reason you right now can stay ahead of it. Whether you have a six-month-old or a 16-month-old or a 36-month-old, no matter where they are, if your child is struggling, the time to act is now. Not someday or we'll wait and see or he'll catch up on his own. It's now. And the truth is, if you have any child under three just create the home life that is conducive, that supports, that, that, that feeds this window of opportunity Now, let me give you a little bit more background of where I am coming from and why this matters. I'm not in private practice anymore. I closed my practice at the end of 2022. These days, I am building an online business with coaching parents directly and consulting and training because I want to help you stay in front of it, and I did that on purpose. And the truth is, after 40 years, I wanted to shift because I needed to go upstream. And what I mean by this is, is working in private practice or in any, you know, school system or a clinic or any of that, we meet families and kids downstream after worry has already set in, after they're already struggling. And, and I look at it as the metaphor that they've fallen off the cliff, and we're just trying to keep their heads above water. And here's what I watched for 40 years in my practice, the thing that actually pushed me to close that down and, and move upstream. For most of my career, children were referred to me somewhere between their second and their fourth birthday. Usually, it was the slow talker, they had some kind of noticeable difference in their social skills, their language. And honestly, as a speech therapist, it was kind of a smart first step, That if your child isn't hitting some of the developmental milestones, start with a speech-language therapist and rule things out, and, and go there before you hit any other big labels, But over the four decades, the picture started to change. The kids were no longer just slow to talk. The, the talking seemed to be tangled up with a lot more issues; sleep issues, attention issues, picky eater issues, poor play, poor connection, poor sensory understanding And so it got murkier and murkier. And then, like all of us in 2020, what happened? We had the lockdowns, and they started coming to my practice younger and younger, 20 months, 18 months, 16 months. And the truth is, they looked and presented much more miserable than ever before, and I could see the worry and the panic and the overwhelm with the parents. They were worse sleepers, harder to settle, harder to connect with. And yes, the world had turned upside down, so that really shifted everything. But I think the scariest part as we started to come out of that in, you know, 2021 and 2022, and now I hear it often, parents and professionals will say, "Ah, she's a COVID baby." And I remember saying, "What the heck? You just made that up." Just because the world turns upside down, we don't all of a sudden flip and change our expectations of what healthy growth and development is for our beautiful, innocent children And why would we just accept that as a new normal? And I, I tell you this because I think it's the opposite of reassuring. What I watched close up for years was not, "Don't worry, they all sort of figure it out on their own." It was more like the foundations were getting shakier and shakier, and the cost showing up younger and younger, earlier and earlier for our children, our innocent, vulnerable children who are looking to us to s- to support, to guide, to steward. That is exactly why wait and see is the wrong default, and why getting ahead of it, building earlier, is really the whole game And there's no perfect, clear recipe. There are styles and personalities and different homes and different kids and different parents and all of that. But I think this is where your gut comes back into the story. After hundreds and hundreds of families that I've worked with, I can tell you the mom who says, "Something doesn't feel right here," is usually onto something. Not always, but usually. Your intuition is not the enemy of good parenting. It is, I think, the best instrument you've got. God gave us this intuition, this, this ability to see into our children. So even if we're not comfortable dealing with newborns and babies and toddlers just yet, the whole parenting is wired into our DNA to build that connection. It might not come automatically, but it's there, and it's our, our responsibility to listen to it. So don't let anyone, even a kind, well-meaning, credentialed someone, to talk you out of that Listen to your own intuition. So here is your shift this week, and it's not panic and it's not wait. I want you to become a detective. This week, your only job is to honestly locate your child where he is on this developmental journey of talking and listening and all that goes with that, right? The attention, the social engagement, the, the joint attention. So I want you to take a good hard look, not where you hope he is, not where you fear he might be, but just be the detective and gather the information. Where is he or she actually resting today? And the way you do that is with data, not dread, not worry. So here's how. For the next few days, keep a running list, whether it's on your phone or on the fridge or on a little notepad, wherever, of the words that he or she says on her own, on their own, right? Not ones that you prompted your child with, but the ones that she or he really reach for themselves. It could be approximations. That's absolutely fine. And I think the data will surprise you, and it can surprise you in either direction, right? It could be more, which is more often the truth, and, and it could be less. You could be overestimating. But remember what defines a word, Approximations, like I said, ba for ball or da for dog, right? An animal sound, moo, is a word because it represents cow. Environmental sounds, beep, beep, or swoosh, you know, if the wipers are going, right? All of that counts. Also, sign language counts for this vocabulary list. But a side note, gestures don't get put on this list. They're important. They're very important. I talk a lot about gestures here because it is a form of expressive communication, but it acts more like a precursor to talking. It's not really talking itself. The sign language, like for more or, you know, sorry, those kinds of things, eat, that fits on this word list. And then ask three simple questions. One, how many words really on his own? Just add them up. And I want you to do this over several days, three, four, five days. And, and I have done this hundreds of times probably, and parents will always get back to me and say, "Oh, you know, they had 22 words on, on Monday, and then I realized by Wednesday they had five more words, and then by Friday there's 10 more animal sounds that I never even added." So take your time and collect them over time. The second question, ask yourself, is he starting to put two words together, A noun and a verb, or a noun and an adjective. And then the third question, is the back and forth there? Is the social dialogue starting to emerge? When you give him something, whether it's a sound, or a word, or a silly face, does he give you something back? Is he beginning to buy into this dyad exchange, So that little volley, that, that social exchange, you giving him something and him responding back, is really the beginning of what talking is all about. And that's it. That little bit of honest looking turns a vague 2:00 in the morning dread as you're Googling it on your phone into something that you can actually work with. You don't wanna guess, because you need this information, real hard data, to build from. And you don't need a wait list to start moving the needle, 'cause that's a whole 'nother ugly process. The simplest things, getting down on the floor, being with them, trading a few social exchanges, sharing, you know, a carrot or an apple, chewing together, munch, munch, munch. Sharing a book instead of reading it from cover to cover, and see how you can pull them in and use it as a facilitating tool. Those are all things that you can start doing today. You don't have to worry about the, the wait list or is he going to fall into this risk group or that risk group? You are building the foundation while you watch. That's door number three. That's your third option One more thing, and this is really important. Write down what your gut is telling you today. Actually write it down. Because if that feeling keeps nagging at you week after week, that's a signal, and acting on it does not mean that you have failed, and it doesn't mean that you panic either It, it can mean that you build more intentionally at home first. And yes, if it keeps tugging at you, by all means, pick up the phone and call someone. Reach out to a professional and ask their opinion. Get a new set of eyes on it. But don't wait until you get on someone's schedule. Acting is not the same as panicking. Acting is just refusing to leave your child to chance. Acting is building it with purpose So here's the through line. Two myths that I've talked about. Last episode, in 158, I talked about just talk to him and it will click, and then today was just wait and see, he'll do it when he feels like it. Both leave your child standing, I think, in the same spot. And by now you're asking the obvious question, the one that I would be asking too. then what do I actually do, and in what order? H- how do I help them? Where do I start? That's exactly where we're gonna go in the next episode, The real foundation, the things that have to come first before true words. I'm going to lay it out so you can walk your own path in the rhythm of your family, And if you don't want to wait for that, and I hope by now you know how I feel about waiting, right? Here's the head start, and it's free, it's the guideline that I referenced last week, the 10 things that come before talking. Think of it as a detective checklist so you can see exactly where your child is on this beautiful path of human development, early child development. I want you to grab it down below. It's free, it's simple, and it turns that 2:00 in the morning dread or, ache in your stomach. If you want to get ahead of it, start there You don't have to panic. You don't have to do this alone. You just can't leave it to chance. Trust that feeling in your gut. It's been right more than you know. Thanks for being here. God bless, and I'll see you next week on Talking Toddlers