Severe speech delay at 2 to 3 without autism, did your child talk later?

[Wwonderiinn]

Anyone kids with severe speech delays age 3 who didn’t show signs of autism - still go on to talk?

If so did they….

Completely non verbal at age 2?

Babble and make lots of sounds before the actually started on words?

Did they say the odd ‘popout’ word or sound and then never again?

We’re the gesturing and communicating in all other ways? Inc sign

Were the focussed and engaged and otherwise seemed like they wanted to talk ?

Did they get very frustrated and just make one constant ‘eh’ or ‘aaaaaaaaah’ shouting / strained sound?

Any other significant things did or didn’t do before they started talking or did you ever realise why?

I’m concerned my son has Childhood Apraxia of speech as his presentation even at 2 is already matching this. I’m holding out hope and this is why I’ve written this post. We will still obviously get him the support he needs but it breaks my heart to think he could have this condition.

I really just want to enjoy these early years; he’s such a delightful boy but it breaks my heart to think he could be trapped in a body that can’t speak and even if he does manage to learn, it’ll be years if not a decade of intense therapy which we don’t have the money for..we will find it somehow though..

Also, autism has pretty much been ruled out at this stage as he has absolutely no traits apart from being non verbal

Thanks 🙏

Eldest had about 3 words at 2, and I remember at 2.5 him saying his first sentence (more sweeties). It turns out from later conversations with other people that whilst I could understand him at 3 (when he was still a boy of few words), no-one else really could, so my memory is probably a bit rosy compared to his actual ability. He never understood signing, and even at 15 doesn't get pointing (as in I'll point to where something is, and it won't occur to him to follow my finger - and he's never pointed himself) and despite him getting all the coaching that a new mother with her precious first born can do, he never got signing either.

Now he talks the hind leg off a donkey.

He's dyspraxic, so fine motor control is an issue (this has certainly also affected what and how he eats, so I would think would affect speech) but not diagnosed with anything else, and hasn't needed speech therapy (although he does say 'f' instead of 'th' - despite that not being the accent of the people around him)

I was about to say that perhaps the fact that I always could understand what he wanted, without him needing to speak might have made a difference, but actually, given how every other motor control issue has gone with him through his life, it's just that he needed a bit longer, and he only got to 80-90% proficiency. Same with riding a bike, putting on shoes, buttoning up a shirt, writing etc. He sometimes finds it a bit frustrating, but TBH, there are worse disorders to have - most of his issues have workarounds these days (or he just needs to have adults who aren't hard on him about something he'll never be perfect at)

DS1 didn't babble at all - closest he got was when he had a habit of walking around the house trilling... when he was primary school age, there was a lot of mindless singing as well (drove his little brother mad)

I have a son he this year 4 he still wear a kimbie he like to say the word no he say mama but he don't say mum yet bt you can see he try very hard to talk he do talk but it don't come out the way it must but am with him everyday but his understanding is very good and I now know when he want water and he shows you what he want

I just my boy can talk tel me what is wrong sometimes I don't understand him or don't what he want it break my hart so much but he understand when I ask him something he then show me when his brother want to go out by the door or when he is awake

My much younger DB hardly said anything until he was 3. He did point, play well and clearly had good language comprehension.

When he finally started to talk he caught up fast, and was top of his class from Y1 through an Ivy League PhD.

I think so. It was 1-2-1 sessions tailored to her and she had to be taught how to physically form the mouth shapes and make every sound. There were also exercises like drinking through progressively more difficult straws and blowing on recorders/whistles etc to strengthen the mouth muscles (although this part might have been more with the private speech therapist, can’t remember exactly sorry).
It was a regular primary school by the way, just with a speech and language centre attached.
(She did babble as a baby and toddler, it just didn’t make any words.)

Did he babble as a baby and before he started talking? Did he get frustrated when he couldn’t get his words out?

My neighbour's boy didn't start talking until he was four. They moved away soon after, but another neighbour kept in touch with the family for a long time afterwards, and he went to university so starting to talk late didn't appear to have held him back at all.

I think perhaps he babbled a bit, then he stopped. I don’t recall that he seemed frustrated.

My son was referred to speech therapy age 2 as he wasn’t saying more than 2 words and his speech very muffled. Turned out he had massive tonsils and adenoids covering 95% of the nasal passage and they were sitting on the ear tubes so even though he passed hearing tests what he was hearing was very muffled. Can’t get him to stop talking now 🤣

Did he babble much as a baby?

My DD had speech apraxia. She could not imitate any noises or sounds at all before age 2. So it’s not just that she couldn’t talk, she couldn’t make any animal noises, copy any sounds like oooh or baa. She couldn’t copy any oral motor things either so if I said DD can you do this and waved them she could copy me (although wouldn’t always do it) but if I said can you open your mouth like this she didn’t know what to do. She would obviously open her mouth to eat food so she could do the action as a reflexive sort of response but not as a voluntary one. She didn’t babble at all. By age 2.3 she said gaga for everything like she would point at a dog and say gaga and I’d point at a ball in a book and say what’s this and she’d say gaga. We were accepted for speech therapy and all the recommendations were sort of common sense so we were doing them anyway. Eventually she started being able to copy some sounds but she couldn’t change the sound in the word so she could say mama but for pizza she’d say peepee. I practised for hours with her and eventually I managed to get her to make a pause in between syllables when she was trying to say a word so she managed pee - za. When she cracked this with the pause strategy (she was nearly 3) she was talking in sentence within a couple of weeks.

She is autistic (diagnosed 3.5) and has some struggles but is a wonderful girl and has an amazing vocabulary. Incidentally despite struggling for so long to talk she taught herself to read before 4 and at 7 has just finished the lion the witch and the wardrobe 😂

Oh also I have another autistic DC who did babble and who didn’t have a speech delay. Not babbling is a strong predictor of a speech disorder and has high ASD overlap but doesn’t mean they won’t get there eventually.

This is a lovely story and amazing she did so well.

did she have specific apraxia speech therapy?

was she pointing signing gesturing and using eye contact from
an early age?

is she fluid and fluent now?

My son was the same as this, it took him until 4 to speak but then the floodgates opened and he just started talking in full sentences, he’s now doing his GSCEs - taking mandarin, French and Spanish! Absolutely nothing wrong with his speech and he’s predicated 8/9 in all subjects!

I was very lucky because in my job I work with highly specialised paediatric SALTs so I got a lot of extra info and input from them in the coffee room etc! They explained that although it was highly likely she had a form of speech apraxia, in the NHS you would be very hard pushed for an SLT to actually give that diagnosis at age 2. It is the sort of thing they usually diagnose at age 4+ because speech delay isn’t even usually diagnosed until 3 as it’s relatively common for late talkers to not speak until over 2. Then they’d want to see at least 6-12 months of SLT and intervention and be able to do thorough assessments etc so actually you probably won’t find a child in the UK with a formal diagnosis of speech apraxia certainly before age 3 unless they had other developmental things already going on such as cerebral palsy etc. A standard referral at age 2 isn’t going to end up in any sort of diagnosis for a while. However when pushed my SLT agreed she had an early speech apraxia profile, but as you can see she did manage to start talking fluently at age 3 so some would argue that she never actually had true speech apraxia if that makes sense as for that to be the case she would need to still have difficulties later on. So really although your DC may be showing early signs of speech apraxia they may not meet diagnostic criteria later on. In the US they are more willing to diagnose stuff early and there is a lot more in the way of early intervention.

My DD is now fluent and has no issues whatsoever. If anything I’d say her speech is advance for her age in that she can sing songs with loads of words in very quickly with no problem whatsoever eg rhythm of life! She did have quite stereotyped and almost jerky speech in the early days until she was about 4.5 in that it sounded quite effortful and not smooth. But that disappeared by about 5.

She had good eye contact and was fairly sociable. She would point at things in books and occasionally for interest as well and if I asked her where something was she would point correctly. But overall her gestures were much more limited than her siblings in hindsight. She didn’t do things like put her arms up in the air when she wanted to be picked up, she would just cry. I tried to teach her signs but she only picked up a couple and she did struggle a bit with imitation. We think she is dyspraxic which may have also been a factor.

Didn’t he babble before this or sound strained when trying to speak?

Hi, OP -

I’ve interacted with you on this thread so I hope you don’t mind that I am back. I wrote about my much younger DB. Except that he did not use sign language, it seems that DB was much like your DS and when he started speaking age 3 he caught up quickly - he did have a bit of speech therapy around a couple of sounds that I forgot to mention earlier.

I should have mentioned that my parents, especially DM, were worried. Of course you feel your DC’s every vulnerability and you are, too. But it seems too soon to get a sense of whether DS might have CAS, much less a diagnosis. Even if he does (which does not seem, statistically, to be the most likely outcome), it may well be amenable to therapy and a good outcome.

I know how easy it is to get sucked into a cycle of worry (my husband has had - we hope in the past now - a pretty awful cancer that dragged me too far into this). Please don’t think I am criticising you: I’ve been there. And I’ve been told, rightly, that sometimes the best thing is to appreciate the lovely person we’ve got in the moment, whilst staying gently alert. A tricky balance.

Very best wishes to you and DS.

My son didn’t babble, very frustrated, huge temper tantrums, we were under a paediatrician, no autism diagnosis, he hated music and singing, pointed and gestured but didn’t use signs. Then had a speech explosion when he was 4.
He was a fantastic climber, had no sense of danger, could swim and ride a 2 wheeler all before speaking. The dr said when we were discharged that his brain was focused on physical development and couldnt really explain it with anything else.
It was an awful stressful time though and everyone told me his speech would come and everyone had a story about speech delay but all could think was but what if it didn’t - I couldn’t imagine the speech explosion until it happened! I hope this is how your story ends and in a few years your back on here commenting on a thread!