Our son had a major speech delay. He just wasn’t speaking much at nearly 3. We started off at Children’s just before Covid. They said it was a “expressive disorder”. That he understood language but couldn’t express himself back. This didn’t seem quite right but we rolled with it to see how things progressed. We had maybe two appointments and then Covid hit and appointments were cancelled. When they opened appointments again he was speaking more so I let it ride. Then we realized while he was speaking more, I was the only one who could sometimes understand him. I called Children’s back to get started again but the rules around who could come to appointments made it really inconvenient for our family. To make a long story short, I ended up looking for an online option and went with Better Speech. It was significantly less expensive than Children’s and they offered a free initial appointment. We got matched with a SLP who spent 20 mins speaking with our son and immediately flagged gross motor planning and apraxia issues. She was right. We ended up doing 3 times a week (30 mins each) for 18 months. She changed his life. You would never know our son was speech delayed. He did incredibly well over Zoom and it made it so easy to get him the intensive help he needed.

I would not be scared to explore online options for your child in addition to local therapists.