Mild PDD

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I agree that lacking speech will seriously affect the child's future. But that doesn't prevent a person from engaging in other language skills in the meantime. I keep hearing this incessant need to make autistic kids speak and it's to the detriment of augmenting other communication skills.
The hyper-vigilance and demand of speech skills leads to a lot of assumptions that I think are equally negative. Just because a child can speak doesn't mean they can do it easily or painlessly. There are autistics that have an incredibly difficult time with speech, regardless of the amount of therapy they have been put through. But because of our prejudice against nonverbal communication, they face lack of access to communication boards and technology. I have to fight to get people to use visual aides and written communication for my son.
On any given day, I can walk into the special ed room and hear the teachers and aides chattering away like monkeys at nonverbal kids and they wonder why these kids can't integrate into mainstream classes. Nonverbal kids can and do perform well in school, if given support.

I didn't suggest that marwan neglect his son's speech therapy, but that he doesn't pin all his hopes and dreams on that child talking. Again, I conducted a lot of speech therapy on my own with our books and dvds (Teletubbies).

Just wanted to jump in and say that although my son had only 1 or 2 ear infections since birth when we were checking his hearing (to rule that out) we found out he had problems with fluid in the ears and had to get tubes put in. I believe everything needs to be explored.

Definitely get the kid some speech therapy. Even if he does not end up communicating entirely through speech, it is important that he be able to communicate somehow. I'm actually studying to be a speech pathologist now, and I had an entire course on AAC last semester (Augmentative and Alternative Communication). For one of our projects, a friend and I designed a communication system for a nine year old boy with autism who doesn't speak. Communication is key. And working on multimodal communication, for instance supplementing speech by pointing to pictures on a communication board, is actually associated with a better prognosis. Despite what some parents fear, the research shows that kids who use multimodal communication often develop more speech than kids who received speech-only therapy, not less.

Many people with autism have difficulty with speech because of its transient nature. People who are autistic often process things in a holistic manner, so it helps them to have something in front of them that they can see in its entirety, rather than forcing them to learn to process and produce language in such a fleeting, ephemeral medium as speech. And the earlier the better, no matter the kid's diagnosis. For instance, kids with a hearing impairment who are receiving therapy by six months of age are much more likely than kids who started therapy later to achieve academically within one standard deviation of hearing peers. Don't let them tell you your kid is not ready. Speech pathologists work with everyone from premature babies to people over a hundred. They work with those who have had serious brain injuries and even people whose only voluntary movement is control over a single finger, or an eyebrow. Find a good speech pathologist who can work within your son's abilities and tolerances without stressing him out.