When should we get worried and get a speech therapist when our child hasn’t started talking yet?

As this article details, (http://www.hanen.org/helpful-info/articles/how-to-tell-if-your-child-is-a-late-talker-%E2%80%93-and-w.aspx), it is very important to monitor kids speech development milestones to catch early on that your if your child is at risk of developmental challenges such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, including Asperger Syndrome. The following guidelines can help you determine if your child’s vocabulary is appropriate for his or her age. If your child has not yet reached these milestones, he or she should be seen by a speech-language pathologist: 18 month olds should use least 20 words, including different types of words, such as nouns (“baby”, “cookie”), verbs (“eat”, “go”), prepositions (“up”, “down”), adjectives (“hot”, “sleepy”), and social words (“hi”, “bye”). 24 month olds should use at least 100 words and combine 2 words together. These word combinations should be generated by the child, and not be combinations that are “memorized chunks” of language, such as “thank you”, “bye bye”, “all gone”, or “What’s that?”. Examples of true word combinations would be “doggie gone”, “eat cookie”, or “dirty hands”.