My first son was somewhat of a late talker but in the months after he turned 2 I recall that he exploded with speech and quickly surpassed all the normal milestones and was speaking in full sentences with advanced vocabularly before age 3. He was recently assessed at age 5 and his verbal comprehension was his highest strength, so much so that it was "off the charts" according to the tester.

My second son is now 2 1/2 and he is not really talking much yet but his comprehension already seems quite advanced for his age, for example he can point to Russia, Canada, United States, Mexico, Brazil and Greenland on a political map of the world when prompted. He is also very advanced physically with climbing, sports, etc. In addition he seems to be very interested in numbers and letters.

I am reading a book by Thomas Sowell about late-talking children and he has some interesting case studies of kids that end up being gifted. I hope my younger son doesn't take as long to learn to talk as some of the kids in the book that didn't speak much if at all until they were 4 or 5, but it is heartening for me to hear stories where everything turned out fine eventually which seems to be the case often where kids are otherwise normal and have good receptive speech comprehension.

My brother worked in the foreign service and told me many kids of his coworkers didn't really talk until they were 3 which may have been attributable to the fact that they were often exposed to several languages from a young age. Both my kids have been with a spanish speaking nanny full time, and we also have taught them some German as well through cartoons and songs etc. I have heard it said that it supposedly makes no difference but based on my personal experience with my first two kids and my brothers observations I would say that it seems like early exposure to multiple foreign languages may contribute to short term delays in expressive speech but that long term it could actually end up being beneficial overall for verbal ability.

Are there any parents of gifted late talkers, maybe even ones who were similarly exposed to multiple foreign languages from a young age, that can share their own experiences?


Last edited by GCN3030; 09/04/22 05:22 PM.