If Your Toddler Is Not Talking Yet
By the Growbaby team · Published Aug 9, 2026
Written against AAP, CDC and WHO guidance. How we write these guides
At a glance
- You can request a free evaluation yourself. No doctor's referral and no diagnosis are needed first.
- The CDC's advice is to do two things at once: ask your doctor for a referral, and call your state's programme.
- It is called a Child Find evaluation, and under 3 it runs through early intervention.
- The AAP recommends developmental screening at 9, 18 and 30 months, and autism screening at 18 and 24.
- Screening happens sooner than any of those if a parent raises a concern. Raising it is the trigger.
This page is not about whether your child has a speech delay. That is a question for someone who can sit with your child, and no article, checklist or app can answer it, including ours.
It is about what you can do this week, which turns out to be more than most parents realise. The single most useful fact in this area is that you do not need a referral, a diagnosis or anyone's permission to get a free evaluation, and you do not have to wait until the next checkup to start.
Do two things, and do them at the same time
The CDC's guidance is explicit that these run in parallel rather than in sequence, and that is the part that saves months. Ask your child's doctor for a referral to a specialist who can do a more in-depth evaluation. At the same time, call your state's public early childhood system and request a free evaluation yourself.
That second one is called a Child Find evaluation. You do not need to wait for a doctor's referral to ask for it, and it costs nothing. Parents commonly assume the process starts with convincing a doctor; it does not have to, and waiting for an appointment to open is time the parallel route does not cost you.
Under three years, that call goes to your state's early intervention programme. From three years, the CDC's instruction is to call any local public elementary school, even one your child does not attend.
What screening is, and when it is meant to happen
The AAP recommends that children be screened for general development using standardised, validated tools at 9, 18 or 30 months, and for autism at 18 and 24 months. Those are the scheduled ones.
The clause that matters more is the other one: screening is also recommended whenever a parent or provider has a concern. There is no waiting for the next scheduled age. A concern raised at fourteen months is itself the trigger, and saying so at an appointment is the whole mechanism.
Worth knowing what screening is not: the CDC's own milestone checklists, the ones we quote throughout this site, are explicitly not a substitute for standardised, validated developmental screening tools. They are for noticing and for describing what you have noticed. The screening is a different instrument, and it is administered rather than filled in at home.
What to bring to the appointment
A completed milestone checklist for your child's age is what the CDC suggests, and the reason is practical rather than clinical: it converts a worry into specifics. Not talking much is hard to act on. Uses four words, points to ask for things, does not follow an instruction without a gesture, and stopped saying two words they used to say, is a description a clinician can work with.
Bring the losses especially. A skill your child had and no longer has is the single item on any of these lists that changes urgency, at every age, and it is worth stating first rather than in passing.
Our guide to when babies start talking sets out the CDC's language milestones at twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-four and thirty months, which is a reasonable place to work out what to write down.
Who you might be referred to
The CDC names three kinds of specialist for a more in-depth evaluation, and it is useful to recognise the words when they are said to you. Developmental paediatricians have specific training in child development and children with special needs. Child neurologists work on the brain, spine and nerves. Child psychologists and psychiatrists cover the mind.
A referral to any of them is not a verdict. It is what an evaluation looks like when the person doing it needs more time and different tools than a checkup allows.
Why the advice is always to act early rather than wait
Because the cost of the two possible mistakes is not symmetrical. A child who is evaluated and turns out to need nothing has lost an appointment. A child who needed support and waited a year for it has lost a year of the period in which support does the most.
This is why the CDC's phrasing is don't wait, and why the free evaluation exists without a gatekeeper in front of it. The system is built on the assumption that parents will raise things early and that many of those things will turn out to be fine.
What we will not do on this page
We will not give you a list of symptoms to check your child against, and we will not tell you what a given number of words at a given age means. That is assessment, it belongs to someone who can observe your child, and a page that does it from a distance is doing something it cannot do.
Growbaby is not a medical device and does not perform triage, symptom checking or clinical assessment of any kind. What this page can honestly offer is the process, which is the part that is genuinely hidden and genuinely useful.
Growing with your baby, week by week
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Frequently asked questions
No, and assuming otherwise is the most common way families lose months here. The referral route and the parent-initiated route are separate doors into the same building, so a slow appointment or a doctor who suggests waiting does not close the other one.
It depends only on age, not on what the concern is: under three it is your state's early intervention programme, and from three it is a local public elementary school. If you are unsure which applies or cannot find the number, say the words Child Find when you ask, because that is the name the system uses for itself and it gets you routed correctly.
The AAP recommends general developmental screening at 9, 18 or 30 months and autism screening at 18 and 24 months, and separately whenever a parent or provider has a concern. That last clause means you do not have to wait for the next scheduled age.
No, and the CDC says so on every checklist page: they are not a substitute for standardised, validated developmental screening tools. They are for noticing and for describing what you have noticed to a clinician who can then screen properly.
It is worth describing exactly that way at an appointment, because the gap between understanding and speaking is information rather than reassurance or alarm. What it means is a question for someone assessing your child, and it is a good example of why bringing specifics beats bringing a worry.
Then you have spent an appointment and know more than you did. The system is deliberately built without a gatekeeper because acting early costs little when nothing is wrong and matters a great deal when something is.
Sources
This guide is for general informational purposes only. Growbaby is not a medical device and does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Every baby develops at their own pace; for any question or concern about your baby's health or development, always consult your pediatrician or another qualified healthcare provider.