Speech delay can mean either the child had speech but lost it, is behind in where they should be for their age or they are completely non verbal. All of these are symptoms of Autism and all of these can have underlying medical issues causing the speech delay. Potential medical causes for speech delay can include one or more of the following:
Cerebral folate deficiency
Vitamin and or mineral deficiencies
Retained primitive reflexes
Mitochondrial deficiency
Heavy metal toxicity
Mold toxicity
Gut dysbiosis
PANS/PANDAS
Brain inflammation
No doctor should ever just toss an autism diagnosis at a child just because of a speech delay. ALL children with a speech delay should have the above medical causes ruled out before assigning an Autism diagnosis to a child because of their speech issue.
I have seen it too often where children lose their speech and right away that is criteria for Autism and so that diagnosis gets assigned to the child. The problem with this is that a lot of times, the child has something else going on and that gets ignored because they are considered Autistic and there is nothing that can be done about it. But that is wrong.
Please advocate for your child and get appropriate testing done. If you can find the underlying cause, you can most likely alleviate their speech issue.
At Warriors of Care we help parents advocate to find the underlying causes for their child's symptoms of Autism and get their child on a treatment plan for healing. If you would like a free consultation to see if we can help you, please click here.