When I was pregnant with my daughter, I read an article about a mother who knew something was wrong with her son and insisted that the doctors order more tests. Unfortunately, she was right and her kid was very sick. I was intrigued by the article and the idea of mother’s intuition, but the logical part of me just couldn’t wrap my head around it.

Somewhere around my son’s first birthday, I finally understood. When he was four months old, he didn’t coo like the developmental charts said he would. At his nine month check up, I told the doctor that he wasn’t babbling yet. And when he turned a year old, he had no words. As he continued to miss each speech milestone, I just knew that something was wrong.

I did all the things that you are supposed to do when you are worried about your child’s development. His pediatrician assured me that some kids, especially preemies, talk later than others and told me to just wait. The audiologist I took him to told me that his hearing was normal. I listened to countless friends tell me about their second cousin’s nephew who didn’t utter a word until he was four and then spoke in paragraphs. But my gut feeling wouldn’t go away.

I have often thought about how my worry about Trevor’s speech was different than other worries I have about my kids. When the dentist assured me that my daughter’s baby teeth would eventually fall out, I stopped worrying about her teeth. When my pediatrician told me many boys don’t potty train until they are three, I believed him. When a professional or a friend tried to reassure me that my son would start talking when he was ready, I did not feel reassured. In fact, I actually felt angry and frustrated because I felt that they weren’t listening to me. There was nothing that anyone could say to make me feel better because I already knew the answer.

After driving my friends and family crazy with my worry, I finally called Early Intervention to get a free evaluation of my son’s development and he started speech therapy when he was 17 months old. Trevor was eventually diagnosed with a speech disorder called Apraxia and needed specialized therapy to learn to talk. He would not have been one of those children who simply caught up with other kids on his own. Thanks to several wonderful speech therapists and my son’s hard work, Trevor now talks (for the most part) like a typical six year old boy. And while we’ll never know for sure if getting help early made a difference, I feel certain that it helped.

We have to remember that while other people are experts on variety of things, we are the only people who are experts about our own kids. If ever that feeling that something is just not right with one of your kids, listen to it. Trust it. Do something about it. You are probably right.