When children are late in hitting developmental milestones, parents worry. And no delay causes more parental anxiety than late talking, which is associated in many parents' minds with such serious conditions as autism and severe intellectual disability. In fact, as children's speech expert Stephen Camarata points out in this enlightening book, children are late in beginning to talk for a wide variety of reasons. For some children, late talking may be a symptom of other, more serious, problems
for many others, however, it may simply be a stage with no long-term complications. Camarata describes in accessible language what science knows about the characteristics and causes of late talking. He explains that today's greater awareness of autism, as well as the expanded definition of autism as a "spectrum" of symptoms, has increased the chances that a late-talking child will be diagnosed -- or misdiagnosed -- with autism. But, he reminds us, late talking is only one of a constellation of autism symptoms. Although all autistic children are late talkers, not all late-talking children are autistic.