23 month old and speech delay and ear wax buildup

[Cparnapy23]

My 23 month old son, who was on track reaching all milestones slowed down his speech development at around 18 months. He was also having difficulty following directions. I had him evaluated by early intervention services, they diagnosed him with severe speech delay. He has been receiving speech therapy for three months+ now with no improvement. He has seen his primary and he and the early intervention staff that evaluated him all feel he has no signs of autism (his daycare provider thinks he may be on the line for autism) His primary feels he is just the silent type and by 2 1/2 he will be speaking fine. Because his father has a history of tongue tie, I had him evaluated by a ENT and he has a mild issue, but not enough to cause the speech delay. His ENT said he can't even look into his ears due to wax build-up. Come to think about it, at his 18 month visit his primary mentioned a lot of ear wax, not surprising his father has issues with this too. Has any other parent had issues with excessive ear wax causing speech delay?
Any suggestions to get my darling back on track would be helpful.
Thank you

Determined mother Cparnapy23

[chocgalore]

have you had his hearing tested recently? I doubt that ear wax alone can cause a severe speech/language delay.

I would get the hearing tested.

have you done the M-chat? If not, just google it. It is an asd screening tool.

are you in the UK?

[gutted2014]

There is a support thread for speech delay on this board, come & join us

[Hedger]

My DS (16 months) also seems to have a delay (no understanding of verbal communications and no speech). He has been seen by a hearing expert and she said the same thing re ear wax - apparently he has about 1cm deep ear wax in each ear and she can't do the tests until this is removed. He can definitely hear - but apparently the wax means he may not be hearing words clearly. We are using olive oil drops twice a day for a few weeks to soften the wax so it can be syringed (the other approach is to use sodium bicarbonate drops). I have had wax build up myself a couple of years ago and it was like I was underwater - I couldn't hear anything clearly at all - so if it is that it could definitely be causing your child's speech delay/reduced understanding.

[ikeaismylocal]

I had ear wax problems when I was a child, it didn't delay my speach but it was very hard to hear some times.

It was especially hard if I went swimming or washed my hair by lieing down in the bath, the water would get stuck behind the wax and I'd hear very little.

Something to bare in mind if his ears are syringed is that the world really does sound very loud and scary afterwards, I remeber being around 6 and coming out of the doctors after having my ears syringed and being terrified of the world around me.

[Moonshine86]

Hi there.

How is your sons hearing now? I could've written your thread myself about my DD!

Hope all is well.