On speech delays and parental panic…

I have no preconception that I’d like to see you be or do. I have no desire to foresee you, only to discover you. — Mary Haskell, in a letter to the poet Kahlil Gibran

The Kid is almost 2, and he’s not really speaking yet. He babbles, he signs, he knows a couple of words, and he makes animal sounds. But he doesn’t talk.

Even a cursory amount of Internet research turns up dire warnings about speech delays. The extreme importance of intervening with speech therapy early is often stressed. I’m not discounting this, and indeed, we are getting speech therapy for our son. If it helps him, great, and I certainly don’t see how it can hurt. Although if it does cause him undue stress, I will probably discontinue it.

The most difficult thing about this situation — and I imagine this is true with every parent of a child who experiences some kind of delay or abnormality in their development — is to tamp down the anxiety. I tell myself every day not to stress about this, that The Kid is doing just fine in other areas and is likely just a late talker. This is a case where access to too much information, via the Internet, is probably a bad thing. It raises anxieties unnecessarily, leads me to fret about the rarest of outcomes and makes me worry that my child is not “normal” enough.

I never even wanted my child to be “normal.” Of course, no one wants their child to have a developmental disorder or a disease. But I mean that I don’t want my child to fit comfortably into what is average and expected for every person. I certainly didn’t. Rather, I want The Kid to be exactly who he is, even if that means he’s not talking like the other kids his age.

Thomas Sowell has researched late talkers and has found a corollary between late talkers and ability in music, math and memory. He also gives this sage advice, which I think applies to all parents and children:

In this age of labels, when there is a government program for every label, parents have to be on guard against having their children pigeon-holed. The stakes are just too high.