She stopped talking after we moved: is that normal?

A child who goes quiet after a big change in language environment, such as a move, is often in what King and Mackey call the silent period. They describe it as a normal, active stretch in which the child absorbs sounds, words and grammar without producing much out loud yet. Their advice is not to push for speech. That is one pair of authors' position, not a rule that covers every child, so the last section says when to ask a professional.

What is going on

After a move, a child can find herself in a new class, with a new caregiver, surrounded by a language she hears far more than she speaks. King and Mackey say the silent period is most common right after a change like this, and that it is not a sign that anything is wrong.

The mechanism they describe is the word "active". Quiet does not mean nothing is happening. The child is taking in how the language sounds, which words go with which situations and how sentences are built. What has not started yet is speaking aloud.

The book gives one family's example, as a report and not as a finding: a six-year-old who had just arrived in the US from Poland stayed silent in English for three months and then, in the authors' words, "started speaking English profusely". One child's story shows that a long quiet stretch can end this way. It does not tell you how long yours will last.

What to do tonight

1. Do not push for speech before she is ready. King and Mackey say pressure tends to add anxiety, not speed.
2. Keep the exposure and the interaction going at the same quality and the same quantity as before the move. The quiet child is still taking the language in, so the input is what counts.
3. Skip requests to say a word on cue, for a relative or for you. That is a form of pushing, so it falls under the same advice.
4. Expect the speech, when it comes, to arrive in a rush more often than bit by bit. The authors say this is how it often goes, not that it always does.

Nothing in this list asks you to run drills or to track her progress. The whole task is to keep the language present and to leave the pressure out.

What is still unknown

• How long a silent period lasts. No source read for this site gives a typical length, so this article does not give one. The three months above belong to one child.
• Whether your child's quiet is a silent period. The sources describe a child going quiet in a language, especially somewhere new. They do not give a way to confirm it from the outside.
• What to do if the quiet spreads beyond the new language. The sources read for this site do not cover that case, so the next section sends you to a professional.

When to ask a professional

Ask your child's pediatrician or a speech-language therapist if you are worried about her hearing, her speech or her development, or if she stays silent in every setting, with everyone and in every language. You do not need to wait for a silent period to "run its course" before asking, and nothing here replaces an evaluation. The sources read for this site do not say how to tell a silent period from something else, and this article does not try to.