Speech delay :-(

[Misstrouble19]

since my son's birthday all he's done is sing happy birthday to you lol yes my sons with early intervention team and it's done him the world of good... hardly much babbling now i dont think... i can understand what he's saying now like 50% of the time but he's come such a long way speech wise he's a number 8 IN HIS IDP AT NURSERY (play group) but changed from a 5 to an 8 within 4 months.. he's 3 and working in 16-26 gap but thats changed very quickly

 

[nicki01]

My daughter is autistic and has a speech delay, its frustrating at times, my 18 month old neice has almost caught her up with her speech now only Charlie is 3.5 yrs!
We done a speech and language therapy course in January for 4 weeks and she has come on loads since.
The key is limit your own speech hugely.
I have always talked to Charlie alot. However they have taught me so differently but it seems to have helped.
I just tell her what she needs to hear, whereas before I would say 'Charlie we are going in the car to the shop, we need to get bread, milk and cheese, have you got your coat. Where are your shoes etc etc.'
Now i say 'Charlie shop, find coat and shoes'
Then when we are in the shop 'where is the bread...... Where is the milk.......'
Then 'shop finished, home time'
Really basic and simple, just what she needs to hear. Before I would chatter away to her and it wasn't actually doing her any good!
Sadly the referrals take a while, Charlie's delays where picked up when she was 2 and 1 and half years later we have only done one speech & language course, our second is in August.

 

[Boo44]

It's very very frustrating waiting for SLT with no improvement in the meantime. Am actually considering paying to have private SLT but not sure how expensive it is or how to go about it...

 

[minties]

He sounds very similar to how Thomas was at 22-25 months old. Thomas was always very good at understanding language but just didn't seem to want to speak it. It was extremely frustrating and worrisome. When he did talk it sounded a bit weird, like teddy was teh-yee and he didn't parrot and refused to call me mummy.

Now I have Sophie who says new words all the time and parrots any word i ask her to, but can't pronounce a lot of them correctly (no for nose, kiyee for kitty etc) so I freak out that she's got something wrong too. Even water sounds like dawda. And when she does attempt a sentence, it's with this weird pause between words. "water....mummy...Sophie?" (which actually sounds like dawda mummy fofee).

I hope things go well for Jack. He is a lovely wee boy from what I see on here.

Oh and Thomas turned out fine in the end, he just randomly started saying lots and his speech took right off. So no idea why he didn't talk until he was 2.

 

[Boo44]

Thanks minties! It's always reassuring to hear of others who have come out the other side! I think I would be ok if it wasn't for comparing with other kids. I know that's like number 1 in the book of what NOT to do as a parent, but when he is so clearly behind how can I not?!

For instance his friends say things like 'oh the farm! A pig! Pig hungry!' Or the other day his friend said 'ding dong broken we must knock door'. I was flabbergasted!

Jack is showing improvement but like I have said before it's almost like he's decided which words he will say and sticks to them. Very difficult to get him to try new words. But he can say 'uh oh mama num-nums all gone!' when I've finished my food, or he'll say 'uh-oh shush dodo in there!' if his brothers dummy falls out (Freddie is 'shush' to Jack) and a few weeks ago he wasn't stringing words together. But I spend a long time on words like bus or baby and just nothing!

It's like a constant level of anxiety now. And waiting for this explosion as I have been for over 6 months makes it worse when it doesn't come

At least if I pay for a SLT assessment we can get the ball rolling

I'm sure Sophie is completely fine I read that you should be able to understand something like 50% of what they say at 2, and 75% by age 3. Then they should be understandable by everyone including non family members in the main part by age 4

 

[minties]

I used to hate other kids being around Thomas, it would make me feel like I was some failure as a mother. It really didn't help that I have a cousin who is 11 months older than Thomas and who started talking when he was 10 months old! He could sing nursery rhymes at 13 months, could sign for also sorts of things and say complicated words like helicopter and butterfly perfectly. At family gatherings no one would even try to talk to Thomas because my cousin would be the only one to respond.

Thomas only chose to say so many words also. Daddy, teddy, car, one and bye were a few I can recall. He didn't say mummy until 2.5 or thereabouts.

There were lots of other kids that were similar in speech in our coffee group, funnily all boys. Sophie also has a friend who is 2 years 1 month and his speech is very much the same. A set of words he's used for a long time, noises and grunts in place of words, and some animal noises. Sophie has way more words than he does, but he communicates his needs just fine so doesn't bother with new words.

My brother also had difficulty with talking as a toddler, on a much worse scale though (like not till almost 4). He's the most talkative, successful one of the two of us these days. Has a whopper of an IQ too, around 160, mine is 118 and I was full on talking in sentences by 18 months apparently.

Thomas is perfectly normal with speech now and even shows quite a talent for comedic timing and comprehending difficult words and concepts.

Best of luck to Jack!

 

[Boo44]

I love you minties!

All of those boys you've just described sound exactly the same as jack! Lots of gestures and sounds and a few words he's comfortable with. Then who needs any more?! Hopefully he'll catch up just like your Thomas did

When we kiss him we make a noise like 'mwah' and when we hug him or he hugs us we always say 'ahhhh' and cuddle him. So jack being jack has decided to say those noises instead of words. In the car when I picked him up today we were talking about what we could do when we got home, and he was saying

'Mama shush num-nums, Dada dack mwah ahhhh!'

Which translated means - mummy and Freddie can have food and daddy and jack can kiss and cuddle. In one sense I'm like Ohhhh that's so cute! And then on the other hand I'm like whyyyyy can't you use the actual words...

 

[veganmama]

any update boo??

 

[Boo44]

Hi thanks for asking He's had a private SLT do a speech assessment and one therapy session so far

She says he has some very advanced sounds and has advanced language and understanding for his age. Speech wise she agrees he is behind but it is that he has missed two critical sounds 'p' and 'b' which they usually pick up first. She says it is likely due to his recurrent ear infections in his first year (although hearing test was normal)

So we're concentrating on those sounds now and have had some breakthroughs although it is generally slow! She says he is very Young for speech therapy and I have to be careful I don't push him and make him rebel against it completely!