Granted my son is great with all of the physical aspects of play, running jumping crawling and climbing his speech is disturbing to me. He is 15 months old, and barly babbles if you can even call it that.... he has said ma ma ma and da da da... but not much else...
when should I be concerned about the need for a speech therapist?

My daughter is now 18 months and we at 15 months said NOTHING... the Dr referred us to Early Intervention and they told us that it would be best to evaluate her at 18 months because at 15 months EIP is harder for them to qualify. They said they dont expect them to say much at 15 months but by 18 months they should be saying something.

My daughter now says "dah" for everything and was just evaluated for the EIP and we are waiting to hear if she qualifies.

So really what I'm saying is wait until 18 months! :) hehehehe In the mean time, model model model, talk talk talk, and read read read. They need to see us and hear us using the words rather than hear us telling them "say Mama" or "say Dada" or "say Hello"... thats what the Speech therapist told me.

Good luck!!! Hope that helps!

Thanks, we work with him a lot, and every evening I try to read to the boys... my older son loves to be read to.
Carson loves to point at stuff, he thinks that he can get by with that and not speaking..... I work with a speech therapist, and I didn't know when was a good time to bring him to her.
THe other thing I am concerned with is how hoarse his voice is.... she told me it was from the laryngomalacia (which he sees the ent this coming month anyways)

I wonder if the hoarse voice feels like a scratchy throat and maybe that would delay speech... hmmm that seems like a good question to ask!!

Yeah I would wait until 18 months... and dont start to worry before then. I know that sometimes children who are born and grow up with siblings can have speech delays because the siblings tend to do things for them and get things for them. They also are not patient enough to wait for an answer or content enough to leave open ended questions. They say that about New Yorker parents too... they just dont have the patience to wait for their kids to answer and they tend to answer for them a lot! lol

It's worth checking out but do give it a few months yet... you have plenty of time! :)

Michelle has some good reasons to wait till the 18months, Parker really wasn't saying anything either at that age, he was about 18months when he started talking, BUT he had had quite a few ear infections that caused him to be deaf for about a 6 month period, so that didn't help things, though his hearing has gotten better now, and his talking.....well he doesn't shut up :rolling:

Although, my son is only 8 months - this has helped me out. It is always good to know what to expect in the coming months. My son barely babbles all that he says is uh. tee hee

15 months is a bit early to raise any red flags. Catherine at 18mo only said "mama" and she said it for everything and in no way associated it with me. She made no other consonant sounds, and consonant sounds are required for "babbling." Vowel sounds only is "cooing," which is what she was doing. She qualified for Early Intervention at that point because of this as well as some pretty significant delays in other areas. At her evaluation, which was actually done at 17.5 months, she measured between 9 months and 36 months across all skill sets. Way ahead in some areas and way behind in others.