The first question that comes to your mind when you realize that your child is speech delayed, is why did it happen.
You might blame yourself.
You might blame your spouse.
Family and friends might come to your rescue.
But from experience, they rarely do.
There is this legion of family and friends who will tell you that you are to blame.
They will indicate that you do not talk to your kid as much as you should.
They will feel that you are too detached.
And that can really weigh you down.
But ignore them.
You know very well that you are doing enough for your child.
It is just that they have the condition.
You will of course try to do everything to rectify the situation.
It could be trying to read out more to your child, talk more to them and other activities that you might have heard.
But my advice is that you first take the kid for assessment by a speech pathologist or pediatrician.
They will tell you what is the trouble with your child.
An audiologist could also come in to test whether their hearing is alright.
They will also be assessed for autism so that you can know early to work on it.
Once you have the assessment out of the way, it is time to remedy the situation.
There are certain activities that you can engage in with your kid.
There are games, exercises as well as books that you could try out.
You will also be prudent if you try speech therapy from day one.
You could either go to a speech therapist, do teletherapy if available or do it from home if you spend lots of time with the child.
Since raising a speech delayed child is hard enough, there are some virtual support groups that you could join to help you deal with the difficult situation.
Here are the topics on speech delay in children that we have looked at in themonterabbi.