Anyone else here needed intensive speech therapy? I rarely hear on here about the autistic people that had the marked developmental delays prominently measured or flagged since childhood, but I'm curious about the proportion of us in these spaces. I personally had a 40% speech delay in early childhood as a speech/language developmental delay. Its something that is apparently noticeable, particularly when you're 4.5 years old where typical language development skyrockets. I couldn't really mask that or have a standard mainstream education; it was literally impossible. The best they could do was part-time, but even then that was with an aide because I couldn't functionally communicate sufficiently, and would often leave the classroom entirely. I also had some serious eloping issues (a NDE with drowning at 3, frequently bolting or getting separated from my parents for dangerously long periods of time).…