We tend to take speech for granted but some parents become anxious when their infants and toddlers don’t hit certain milestones. Realistically, when are these concerns founded and what can parents do to avoid the misinformation and bad advice from the internet?

 In this episode we interview a speech-language pathologist Tala Hershey, M.S. CCC-SLP, TSSLD  (https://www.hersheytherapypractice.com/)  who gives us practical advice on how to look for and encourage realistic and appropriate speech milestones.

We’ll answer the questions:

Do we need to explicitly teach toddlers to speak? Isn’t it a skill that just develops organically or do parents actually need to focus on building speech and language? What’s the difference between Expressive vs. Receptive Language and Pragmatic skills?

Finally, we’ll address the WORST way to teach our toddlers to talk and whether to “reward” toddlers for saying certain words (and avoiding others.)