Hi Melody, one of my nephews had difficulty learning how to talk on his own. He was about the same age as your friend’s son, about 2 and 1/2, when his parents sent him to a speech therapy clinic at a local university. I drove him there myself a couple of times and he was treated by therapy students under the supervision of a qualified therapist.

What I saw the students do was to play games with him with a ball, and when he got involved and expected the ball to be rolled back to him, the student would hold onto the ball while encouraging him to verbalize before he received it back. They worked very diligently on showing him how to make different sounds with his mouth.

This was many years ago and I don’t know if such simple techniques are still used, but in my nephew’s case they worked. He began using simple words after about three weeks of treatment, and he became quite a chatty little guy after about ten weeks. He just needed to be taught how to talk.