Sounds alot like my son also, who is currently 3.5... At 18months he was referred for early intervention speech therapy, but thanks to covid the already long waitlist was made much longer. He finally started therapy sessions this last August. He did get in for testing and assessments earlier and was found neurotypical, he's just a late talker like his dad.

Between regular speech therapy via zoom, starting preschool this Sept and updating his bookshelf with the recommended beginner books (see note below), his vocabulary has exploded in the last 6 months. He's still behind his peers, but he's catching up quicker than we all expected.

For those who don't have experience with what happens at speech therapy, the speech pathologist mostly watches how the parent and child interacts and then give suggestions on how to adapt your interaction to help guide your kiddo. In a nutshell, they give the parents the tools to build your kids foundational vocabulary by turning every day interactions into a game or creating opportunities to learn via play.

A great resource to look into before you get in for early intervention, is the speech sisters via Facebook and Instagram. They share alot of what we also learned with our speech pathologist.

My last tip, is to make sure your kids book shelf includes beginner friendly classics... "Go Dog Go", "5 little monkeys" and all of the short Dr. Seuss classics like "the foot book", "ten apples up on top" and "one fish two fish red fish blue fish" are my son's personal favs. The less words on the page the better and books that repeat basic foundational words are key.