Q: My daughter is 16 months old. She is quite active but she hasn't started talking yet. She makes few sounds but does not reproduce a sound when prompted. She uses gestures and points to whatever she wants. She responds well to our speech and can understand and follow simple sentences. My elder son did not have any such problems, nor does anyone in the family has a history of delayed speech. Me and my wife are extremely worried. Do we need to get her checked?

A:Well, for any speech and language problem, the first step is to find out the cause of the problem. If you think that there is no other associated problems like hearing deficit, short attention span etc. then we need to check on the home environment (as in how stimulating it is for language development), child's social tendencies, I.Q. (if required) etc. Once the cause/causes are identified then the intervention becomes more streamlined. I would recommend a consultation with a Speech Language Pathologist at your earliest.