What exactly is "non-verbal"?

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What exactly is the criteria for being considered "non verbal"?

My son is a bit young still, but at 15 months he's still only babbling and has no meaningful words. He does say "mamamaa" and "dadadada" but does not associate them with my husband and I. He has other vocalizations such as "yuh", but I really don't picture him having any true words (such as "cookie" or even "ba" for ball) any time soon.

I'm wondering, is he technically verbal because he makes the babbling vocalizations? And also, what age do they have to be to be "non-verbal"?

Thanks

Non verbal means just what it says. If he's not expressing any sounds you can identify as words, that is non verbal.

There is no specific age at which any kid should be talking. 15 months? Are you already suspecting autism? Why? What else are you seeing? What you've got here isn't enough to go on.

Edit: Sorry. Never mind. Took a look at your profile, so now I know. I think.

I took my two younger kids (twins) to early intervention when they were 18 months old. At that time most of their questions were about receptive language.

For expressive language, they wanted them to have 4 words. That could include animal sounds, and it could include anything they called another person. My daughter had a name for me, my husband, my oldest son, and my younger son. That meant they checked the block on that question.

My son said "ma" and it meant me, plus he said it when he wanted a drink, plus he said it for several other things. They said it was an all-purpose word and they did not count it as a word for that question (with him not having other words).

But really they had about 12 questions and 10 of them were about receptive language. So, if you are going to ask about this, I think that you might emphasize concerns about receptive language, b/c for expressive language, they might not care for a while longer.

I was saying things like "he doesn't talk" and that can allow for him understanding everything. When you say he doesn't seem to understand that is a different story, and no one will think "he probably understands everything and his sister is talking for him" (sorry projecting).

Just my thoughts. My kids ended up having silent ear infections and fluids in their ears and made huge progress after getting tubes in their ears. (Though I have heard of kids helped by antibiotics, also.) So for a while we thought that was all it was.

I don't think you can apply it to such a young child because kids that age do not really communicate verbally anyway.

"Non-verbal" is generally used to describe kids who literally cannot speak a word at an age where their peers communicate fluently.

Well I was going to jump in here and give some good advice about how long it takes kids to talk..whew glad I checked with the Warden. She say our middle red headed daughter say "oh s**t" at age 12 months. Now she was just repeating what she heard like a Mynah Bird. She did know what it meant I dont think. Her Grandaddy come to see her a lot. He was purty salty in the speech dept..lol.

I would maybe call it "pre-verbal."

I think 15 months is too young to call non-verbal. Plus, I don't think being "nonverbal" at that age is necessarily indicative of much. My son had very few words at that age, but by 2.5 he had the verbal skills of many 5 year olds. My daughter didn't do anything but screech and grunt at 15 months (didn't babble or coo at all. No consonant sounds. No vowel sounds. Nothing), and she is advanced verbally at this point (7 yrs). Granted, neither of my kids are NT, so it's not like they were on a typical development path, but their "verbal" abilities at 15 months were in no way predictive of their verbal abilities.

I think that is way too young. dd5 didn't say but one or two words at 18 months, yet by age 2 she was speaking in full on sentances like a 3 year old (she is DX ASD july of this year). DD2.5 didn't say jack till she was 2 and still has a hard time putting two words together.

Thanks for the helpful responses everyone!

For those of you who are wondering, my son is already in Early Intervention for speech, OT (sensory) and has a special education teacher. My husband and I both have AS and our son has many early signs of autism including hand/arm flapping, spinning, toe walking, preoccupation with parts of objects (non-functional toy play), repetitive actions, lack of response to name, poor eye contact, soothing with objects, and probably other things that I'm not remembering at the moment. His diagnostic evaluation will be around 19 months. His receptive language is confirmed to be delayed as he can not typically follow simple instructions such as "give me the ball" or "where's mommy?".

Anyway, I was really just wondering about the technicalities of the term "non-verbal" because I'm going to be seeing a ton of extended family for thanksgiving that are going to have lots of questions, and I want to have my facts straight for them.

Thanks again

I dont htink a 15 month old would be called non verbal. It would probably have to be closer to 2.