3 year old with delayed speech and behaviour. Really need advice.

[ConnorTraceptive]

I'm so cross with myself. I have been coincerned about ds's speech for a year. We have seen the HV twice and will be seeing her again next month and I am kicking myself now for not insisting on a referal sooner.

I had let myself believe her when she said there was nothing to be concerned about and he would probably improve when he started pre school.

Now we're a year down the line and although his speech has made some progress the gap between him and his peers is very wide both in terms of speech and behaviour.

I'm hoping someone wise here will have some suggestions of activities and strategies I can use to help him on a bit.

My main concerns are:

1 - Only has around 30-40 recognisable words (although he will echo quite a lot of different words now if that makes sense). Has started to string maybe one or two words together but no real sentences

2 - Does not engage really in two way conversation. So if I ask "do you want juice etc" he will answer yes or no but if I ask a question such as "Did you have fun at school today?" or "Have you been doing some painting?" I will get no response at all

3 - Plays with toys and concerntrates on them well but always alone. Never plays alongside other children.

4 - No sense of personal danger

5 - Will not look at books or sit and listen to a story, never has

He's very affectionate and loving towards people and does love attention from adults. Although he doesn't play with children he does love to wrestle around with ds1.

How can I help him along. He goes to pre school a total of 7 and half a week at the moment and that will go up to 15 hours in September. I'm wondering if he needs to go more now though.

Any advice please???

[SameOldJollster]

This thread has been really insightful and I have ordered "it takes two to talk" today as a result.

My DS is 2y8 and we have just started speech therapy. My nephew has severe autism and that has always been in the back of my mind as he was diagnosed only after language delay was investigated. Having said that I think we're all on the spectrum somewhere...

Connor will watch this thread for updates. Good luck.

[applechutney]

Hi Connortraceptive, I just thought I would tell you of our own experience with DS2. he sounds quite similar to your son. While I'm very wary of giving false hope to anyone, our story has a very positive outcome.

Ds2 had severely delayed speech, with maybe four or five words at 3.4. He also had some other worrying traits: a very high frustration level, eye contact not great, non compliant with directions, lack of imaginative play, and didn't point or wave until he was 2.6.

Anyway, at around 3.8 his speech began to develop all of a sudden, and from then on he progressed like a steam train! He is now a bright, articulate and very popular eight year old, and we have no worries at all about his development.

Speech delay can really impact on all areas of a child's behaviour, as I'm sure you know. Sounds like you're doing all the right things, and I wish you the very best of luck for the future.

[lingle]

good luck, let us know how it goes.

[ConnorTraceptive]

Hope you find the books useful for your ds sameoldjollster. I'm hoping mine will turn up quickly!

Thanks for your post applechutney it's always good to hear positive stories nothing wrong with having a little hope!

Hopefully the speech therapy session tomorrow will set us on the right path.

[ConnorTraceptive]

Just back from speech therapist. It was a really really useful session.

On the plus side she actually doesn't think DS's speech and vocab are too far behind and he is where he should be in terms of imaginative play.

His biggest issue appears to to be listening and attention skills basically unless it's on his terms and he is interested then he will not engage at all.

She did an activity with bubbles trying to get him to take it in urns with blowing them and he just couldn't bare not to be in full control of the bottle or wait for his turn. Same thing with another turn taking activity.

Some activities he wouldn't engage in at all because they weren't what he wanted to do.

So the big focus is going to be on his attention and listening/understanding. She says once that improves (although did say he needed ALOT of help in this area so will take time) that the speech will improve naturally.

We've got some activities to do at home and will be seeing her again next week. She is also going to speak to pre school and bring them up to speed on what help he needs.

It was great to really pin point what it is that needs our focus (although he is totally bloody minded so this will not be an easy ride!)

[lingle]

sounds very positive. If you find this hard,
the late great Stanley Greenspan descibes in immense detail the slow process of breaking into one-sided play. I read up in his book "The Child with Special Needs" but there are lots of examples online. You could look up stanleygreenspan.com or "floortime".

Greenspan was a great doctor and optimistic supporter of parents.

[lingle]

should add that Greenspan also overcame some mild learning difficulties and sometimes his prose is a bit like treacle. He usually got people to read over his work and fix the prose.....but it is a bit heavy. Brilliant stuff though

[onanightlikethis]

lingle, its littlemisschatalot here :) great to hear how well your boys are doing...x

[lingle]

(sorry for highjack)
littlemisschat,how lovely to hear from you. I hope that you and yours are well, and would like to say thank you to you for all your generous help. I can so clearly remember you talking me through two-step-instructions and choice questions.......... and DS2 was 3.6. now my biggest problem is that Child A is upset that DS2 is playing too exclusively with Child B.... just typical parenting problems for an immature boy.

Sometimes I wonder whether it would all have worked out anyway without the hard work but, you know what? I really don't think so, I really think we made a big difference to his life.

xx.

[ConnorTraceptive]

Hi lingle. It did feel like a positive meeting. I'm still a little in awe of how she manged to manipulate the session to get ds to demonstrate his difficulties and was able to narrate the whole way through about what she was observing and then pin point what she wanted to work on!

I'm still wavering between positive and "Oh my god I've left it so late to get help what if I fucked up his life forever" It's quite over whelming really.

Glad I've posted here though it's been a life saver.

Now I've just got to figure out if his pre school is the right place for him - am having my doubts about them but am not sure if I'm just over sensitive and protective. gah motherhood!

[lingle]

"gah motherhood!" oh I know.....

Is there any local primary school that has a nursery setting as part of the school? For me this was much much better than a parent-led pre-school because:

1. There are highly experienced/qualfied teachers to back up the nursery manager, who may well herself be a qualified teacher - it just attracts high quality staff who get fuller training on kids with communication issues.
   
2. You get access to the school's Special educational needs coordinator.
   
3. There are much smoother/more fluent lines of communication between the NHS speech therapists (when you do get into their system), the local authorities and state primary schools than between the NHS/local authorities and private settings (sorry for no doubt overgeneralising here, happy to be corrected)
   
4. If this turns out to be your school of choice and his issues haven't faded away by the time you are applying for schools, I think you may have a higher chance of getting in on appeal because of his SEN.
   
5. Again, depending on if you can get into the school, you have the chance of total continuity between the nursery setting and the school setting.
   
6. A school nursery knows exactly what is going to be expected of a child in reception. A priviate pre-school is more likely to fall into the trap of playing to his strengths rather than helping build up foundations in his weaker areas (ie letting him play on the computer too much!)

[lingle]

PS your SALT sounds impressive. Has she got an opinion about the pre-school issue?

[lingle]

PS, the "no sense of danger" thing may help you get a Statement (if you want one) which in turn will help you get into the school of your choice.

PS how old is he exactly? for some reason i was thinking 3.6.

[ConnorTraceptive]

Hi Lingle he is 2.11.

He is at the local pre school that is next to but not actually part of the village school. Most children generaly feed into the two local primary schools.

He won't be going to the primary school that is next to the pre school but I don't have a problem with that. He will go to the other village school which many children from pre school also feed into. His brother goes to this primary school and it is an excellent school so am not too concerned about primary school. Also he will almost certaily get in because of a sibling link.

I do think the staff are experienced but their direct communication with parents is a little lacking. Generally they prefer to communicate with you via his home scool diary. I am possibly expecting too much input?

They did do a report for the health visitor to help get the referal but I felt it painted a bleaker picture of ds than necessary (again over sensitive me?)

DS1 attended the same pre school and I was very happy with his time there and the preperation they gave him for school, however he is a much different child and generally breezed thrugh pre school and into primary.

The speech thrapist is going to phone pre school to go over his assessment and possibly make a visit. Once she has done that I will discuss with what she thinks about it being the right setting for ds.

[onanightlikethis]

connor can i ask what activities the speech therapist gave u to work on at home?

[lingle]

2.11 is so most definitely NOT too late.

"They did do a report for the health visitor to help get the referal but I felt it painted a bleaker picture of ds than necessary (again over sensitive me?)"

Oh god we all remember that. There's so much I could say.... I always found it helpful to remember that their job was to figure out what they had to do so they could meet the child that I knew. Sometimes I had to remind them of that.

[lingle]

re pre-school - see what the speech therapist thinks. I'd feel happy if she visited twice and on her second visit felt they'd followed up thoroughly on at least the most basic suggestions from the first visit.

[ConnorTraceptive]

Digbert at the moment we are doing really simple turn taking activities. This morning I set up a peg board and hammer (in the dining room where there was no other toys to distract him) and I gave him a turn banging down the pegs with hammer then he had to give the hammer and wait patiently for me to have my go and for me to give the hammer back to him and so on for about ten minutes or so.

I had to make sure I had full controll over the situation i.e it was me who decided who's turn it was and not allow ds to grab the hammer from me and he did't get extra time on his go so when all the pegs had been knocked down he HAD to give me the hammer. Also I kept my hand on the peg board at all times so he never had full possession over it at any time. He would try to pull it out the way from me or move it to the other side of the room.

Another activity the speech therapist did was with blowing bubbles. Each taking a turn to blow but ds had to accept that he couldn't hold the bottle or dip the wand.

Simple things really but I guess it's about teaching DS that he has to participate but not just when it's all on his terms. He flipped his lid over the bubble activity because he wanted to hold the bottle and wand and have full controll.

Yes Lingle I'm desperate for them to see all the lovely, wonderfull things ds is. Quite honestly if we lived in a bubble I would never think anything was wrong!!

[ConnorTraceptive]

Oh meant to say when doing the activity I was talking all the time almost narrating what was happening

"your turn to bang the pegs down with the hammer"

"Oh look your banging down a yellow peg/red peg etc"

"Mummies turn to bang the pegs down"

"Your turn, good waiting, well done"

[onanightlikethis]

he may find it easier if you have 2 hammers and you "sneak" a turn.think about games where he NEEDS YOU to play/communicate, rather than ativities where he is the only focus..shape sorters, you hold pieces in a box and dole out one by one, each having a turn this way he gets practice to request items, maybe by reaching/shouting...you then model the langauge, eg:- shape or more or x's turn. bubbles/balloons/jack in box/inset jigsaws all good for this. what motivates him? have you thought about visuals to help him?

[lingle]

"Yes Lingle I'm desperate for them to see all the lovely, wonderfull things ds is. Quite honestly if we lived in a bubble I would never think anything was wrong!!"

hold on to that feeling.

[lingle]

Oh, and whilst holding on to it, do whatever digbert suggests!

[onanightlikethis]

oh and match your langauge level to his...he uses single words, you use single words/sounds linked to actions/2 words absolute max.

[onanightlikethis]

((aww lingle))
maybe he just percieves the world in a different way and needs help with language. we are all different, and have different strenghts and weaknesses...use his strenghts to build on his weaknesses.

[ConnorTraceptive]

Thanks for the suggestions digbert all gratefully received at the moment!!

I'm putting together a photo journal of daily activities/friends/family for him to take to school so they can use it to get him to communicate a bit more.

I'm trying to find ways to incorporate his favourite toys into this activity but am struggling to be creative! He loves train sets, cars and play food at the moment. I'm getting him a dolls house for his birthday because he LOVES them! Any suggestions on how to turn these into activities that he has to use listening and turn taking etc?

I think I am guilty of talking above his language level in a misguided attempt to expand his understanding so will try hard to keep it simple!

My Hanen books arrived today so will start having a good read tonight!