You downloaded the app everyone recommended. Your child used it twice. Now they hand you the tablet and walk off, or they open it and swipe straight past everything.

You probably paid for a year of it.

This happens a lot. It happened to us. It usually is not because your child cannot learn from a screen, and it is definitely not because you picked wrong. Something specific is going on, and most of the time you can name it.

Reason One: The App Is Above Them

This is the most common one by far.

Most speech apps start at "repeat this word." That assumes a child who is already imitating sounds on request. A lot of children are nowhere near that yet.

Before a child repeats a word, they usually make eye contact, share attention with you, and point at things. Those come first. If your child is not pointing yet, an app asking them to say "apple" is asking for something four steps ahead.

The app is not failing. It is aimed at a child further along.

What to change: work on pointing and understanding first. Lay out two cards and say "Show me the cup." Guide their hand. That is the level below, and it is where most children need to start.

Reason Two: The Voice Is a Stranger

Speech apps use recorded audio from a voice actor. Usually cheerful, usually fast, usually American.

For a lot of children that is fine. For a child who is sensitive to sound, or who processes language slowly, or who is used to hearing a different accent all day, it is noise. They are not going to work to understand a stranger talking quickly at them.

Our daughter needed words said slowly, with a gap between them, in a voice she already trusted.

What to change: say the word yourself while the app shows the picture. Mute it if you need to. If an app lets you record your own voice at your own speed, use that. Being able to slow the word down is not a small feature for these children.

Reason Three: Nothing in It Belongs to Them

The apple in the app is a cartoon apple. It is not the chipped blue cup your child drinks from every morning, or their actual shoes, or their grandmother.

Children with language delays often learn a word in one place and cannot find it in another. A word learned on a generic illustration can stay stuck on that illustration. It does not transfer to the real object on the table.

What to change: start from things that exist in your house. Photograph your child's own cup, their own spoon, their own shoes. If an app lets you build exercises from your own photos, that is the version worth using. If it does not, print six photos and use them as cards. It works either way.

Reason Four: There Is No Reason to Try

Apps assume the tapping is its own reward. For some children, it is. For plenty of others, it is not even close.

Our daughter does not eat sweets or chips and does not drink juice. So every reward system built into every app was useless to us. Bubbles worked. Bubbles were the entire economy for months.

What to change: find what your child will actually work for. Then sit next to them and be the one who delivers it. Right answer, bubbles. This turns a solo screen activity into something that pays.

Reason Five: You Are Not in the Room

This is the uncomfortable one, and I say it as someone who did it.

You hand over the tablet and you go and do the dishes, because you have not had ten free minutes all day. That is completely understandable. But a speech app with nobody sitting beside it is mostly just a screen.

Research on tablets and autism keeps landing in the same place. The engagement is real, and the learning depends on how the thing is used, not on the device.

What to change: ten minutes, next to them, phone in another room. Ten minutes with you beats an hour alone. Then genuinely take a break afterwards, because you need one.

Reason Six: Too Much on the Screen

Bright colours, animation, characters, music, a badge popping up. For a child who is easily overstimulated, all of it competes with the word you are trying to teach.

They are not ignoring the app. They are watching the confetti.

What to change: find the settings and turn off whatever you can. Sound effects, animations, background music. If you cannot turn it down, the app may just be too loud for your child.

Reason Seven: You Gave It Four Days

Five days feels like a long time when you are exhausted. It is not.

Our daughter took two days to accept the app we built, which was unusually fast, and that was because it looked exactly like the YouTube Kids layout she already knew. Every other thing we tried took two or three weeks before we could tell whether it was doing anything.

Progress in this area is not a line going up. It is nothing, nothing, nothing, then a word. Then that word vanishes for three weeks and comes back with two friends.

What to change: commit to three weeks at ten minutes a day before you judge it. Keep a note on your phone of any new sound or word. You cannot see slow progress from inside it. You can see it in the note.

What We Ended Up Doing

We tried the popular apps. Our daughter was not interested in any of them.

What she was interested in was YouTube Kids. By three she could enter a video, back out, and swipe to the next one. She had the whole layout memorised.

So I made something that looked like the thing she already trusted, and put our flashcard exercises inside it instead of videos. Same swipe, familiar shape, but the cards were her objects and the voice could be mine, slowed down to a speed she could follow. That is Word Tube.

She accepted it in two days. Within a couple of weeks we heard words she had picked up from it.

I am not telling you that story to sell you an app. I am telling you because the fix was not a better app. It was matching the level, the voice, the pictures and the pace to one specific child. Any tool that lets you do those four things has a chance. One that does not, probably does not, no matter how many downloads it has.

Common Questions

Why does my child ignore speech apps?

Usually the app is aimed above their current level, or the voice and images mean nothing to them. Apps that start at "repeat this word" assume a child who already points and imitates. If your child is not there yet, work on pointing and understanding first.

Are speech apps worth it for nonverbal children?

They can be, when used alongside real practice and with an adult present. An app is useful for repetition, which children with language delays need a lot of. It is not useful as something handed over unsupervised, and it does not replace a therapist or an assessment.

How long before a speech app shows results?

Give it three weeks of short daily use before deciding. Early progress is often invisible day to day: a sound attempted, a picture recognised, a moment of attention held slightly longer. Keeping a written note is the only reliable way to see it.

Is it better to use an app or real flashcards?

Both, and they do slightly different jobs. Physical cards are better for handing over, sorting and posting into a box. An app is better for repetition without setup, and for practice outside the house. We used cards at the table and the app in the car.

Written by Marijan, parent of a child with speech and developmental delay.