Some children don’t talk until they’re age three or older, then go on to do just fine. Why do some kids start speaking relatively late in life? The hosts talk about a recent Ask MetaFilter thread on that topic. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “When Kids Start Speaking Late”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.
And I’m Grant Barrett.
Martha, one of the places I like to read and discuss language online, besides the A Way with Words discussion forums, is a place called Ask Metafilter at metafilter.com.
There’s a category there of questions called writing and language.
And the way it works is anybody who has a question posts it, and anybody else who participates can answer it.
And it’s a very smart community.
There’s some people here with a lot of education and some good thinkers and just kind of reliably funny people, which is always great for leavening it.
And one of the questions that caught my eye this week was posted by a woman who says that she didn’t speak her first word until she was three.
Oh, yeah, I saw that one.
And she wanted to know if there was something wrong with her and if other people who started late in life started speaking at three or four even, if they had information about this, if they could share.
She was basically looking for commiseration.
And what was so attractive about it was the amount of evidence that there seems to be out there to indicate that the age at which you start speaking isn’t an indicator of intelligence or success or anything.
It just happens to be the age at which you started speaking.
Right, right.
And that discussion was interesting because a lot of people mentioned the fact that it seems to be that if you have older siblings, you may end up speaking later anyway because you can’t get a word in edgewise.
That’s right.
They’re kind of your puppet master.
And they do everything for you and they speak for you and your needs are taken care of.
Yeah, for why bother?
And in there, they share the famous anecdote that’s supposedly true about Albert Einstein.
Do you know this one?
Yeah, yeah.
It’s supposedly when Einstein was young, he was a late talker.
And, of course, his parents were worried.
So finally, one day at supper, he broke in with the words, the soup is too hot in German, of course.
And his parents, of course, were greatly relieved.
But they asked him why he hadn’t spoken a word before then.
And he said, well, until now, everything was in order.
And I love that.
It’s very matter-of-fact and straightforward.
Yeah, I don’t know that that’s true.
I’ve seen other versions of that attributed to other people, but it is pretty funny.
Share your stories and information about children who first speak late in life.
You can send them to words@waywordradio.org, on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org/discussion, or you can call us on the telephone, 1-877-929-9673.
