For some of the late talkers/eary understanders... did you get a lot of really complex/specific thoughts (Languagy throughts) communicated in gesture? I got "Mom, can we go sailing" the other day, in a combo of spelling, gesture, and pictographs, which was unique in that I could understand easily and verify clearly. Often it's more complex, and harder to 'get." (I said "yes" by the way, we're going next week -- what a convienient excuse ;)) If so: did you find anything that really worked to reduce the frustration levels around non-verbal communication. (I only worked in THIS field for 5 years, it seems like I shoudl have more idea of my own)
We still have instances like that and DD's been early with speech. I think sometimes toddlers just don't find the need to express themselves verbally.
I can't remember if you said this before but have you introduced signing to your son? We figured DD had a good chance of being a late talker. DH didn't say a word until he was 2 and then he spoke in complete paragraphs according to MIL so we started signing pretty early on in case DD was the same. It turns out she was an early talker (although not as early as some here!) but signing was a wonderful bridge between the time that she was just saying a handful of words to when she started speaking more.
FWIW, we also looked into hyperlexia because DD has some sight words and she's also really into spelling. Just today she was asking me to spell more words with our alphabet magnets and creates her own words and asks me to pronounce them for her.
