So your child hasn’t developed useful speech, and by this time it doesn’t look as if they’re going to.
Perhaps they never had any speech at all, from the beginning; perhaps they began to develop speech, until at the age of three or so their acquisition of words stalled, then regressed.
Perhaps your kid’s got a few isolated words, or a few phrases that come up at inappropriate times, or perhaps they’re utterly mute. Anyway, their communication isn’t sufficient for their needs.
Perhaps they have another diagnosis – Down syndrome or Rett syndrome, say – or perhaps nobody’s offered you an explanation or just used vague terms like developmental delay.
Whatever their diagnostic differences, though, just at the beginning we’ll look at what all children with little or no functional speech have in common.