I am freaking out about DS late speech

[ancienthistrionics]

I have been very calm and understand children develop at different rates but have just been having a google (i know I know) and I'm so worried I may have been slow off the mark getting help and affected his later development.
DS is 2.8, very tall and strong, physically quite advanced, dextrous. He is incredibly expressive, can joke, understands everything we say and seems to know how words work - his understanding vocabulary is pretty wide. But he can only say hat, cheese, mummy, up there, door, eye, bye, hi. Some other things we can teach him to say but he won't say them ever again. Most other things have a sign or a noise, like slurping for milk (slight variation for ice cream), whirling his fingers for helicopter. I can give him instructions, i.e. go to the office and ask daddy for his phone or don't touch anything in the shop etc. and he will always get it right. If he doesn't understand, he looks at me for more info.

If he wants something he finds a picture in his book to show me. He won't say yes, but will always say eeeeeee mummeee, and dee for me. he mimics our sounds well, but it's like he doesn't want to talk.

He is very gregarious and always makes a little friend in the park. He gestures lots and has a massive range of facial expressions.

I have booked a session with a speech and language therapist which is next week but I'm just having a massive worry now.

how does this sound? Does anyone have any experience? He doesn't go to nursery, DP and I both work from home and also have a 14 yo.

Can I echo what Turkeyboots said? DS has just been diagnosed with Glue Ear, a fairly severe case, by an ENT after the GP swore blind there was nothing wrong with his ears. I think you need an expert here.

DS had about 8 words at 2, and no more probably when I flagged up concerns with HV at 2y4m. We had our first SALT assessment at 2y8m, and probably had 8 1-1 sessions, with some homework in between. Was quite slow to progress, and at 3 was still way behind his peers. He started a new pre-school last September at 3y4m and progress was quite rapid. He was formally discharged by SALT at 3y10m but that was 8 months after his last session.

His speech and language now are probably ahead of many of his peers (he was 4 last month), but we've worked quite hard at it.

I remember how worrying it all was :(

Hope SALT can help reassure you and help with a programme.

Hello, thanks for all your support.

The language therapist came this afternoon and played with DS for an hour. She says we are preempting him too much and he has no need to speak. I suppose I already knew this!

He said about 4 new words while she was here. At one point she was dangling a helicopter in one hand and a power ranger in the other asking DS which one he wanted. He was squealing EEEEEEE and pointing to the PR (the green one of course) and she kept pretending she didn't understand. Eventually he gave her a look as if to say I bet you need help dressing yourself and said MAN MAN MAN!

She also did horsey round the sitting room with him on her back (which is no mean feat) making him say stop and go. So pretty game!

I have been reading to him all afternoon and if I do what she says, offering options rather than asking him to speak, he comes out with words although they are still not very clear.

She seemed pretty sure he would respond quite quickly, but did say some of his sounds were a bit unusual and she is coming back next week to spend a bit more time with him.

Sydney I will get his ears looked at properly, you're absolutely right.

yes the practising simple choices thing is a bit dull very important to encourage the reluctant lazy speakers. That sounds like a promising start.

thats excellent! I remember a HV 'suggesting' that we were either speaking for him and/or knowing exactly what he wanted without him actually having to vocalise it, after being momentarily offended we started to back off from jumping in and started holding back till he asked for something, that also was the start of him coming out with a bit more now I remember.

It's very hard, but actually I don't think we 'baby' him enough, if that makes sense. DP once said when we were on holiday it was like traveling with a much-adored but rather drunk and irresponsible friend .

I'm following this thread with interest. I've been googling a bit and to mush some completely unsubstantiated findings together:

mental retardation is at the root of over half of language delays, but this causes global language delay i.e. comprehension issues and difficulty using/understanding gestures.

the next most common, is impaired hearing - clealy, earlier the intervention the better

then, there is mental maturation - i.e. point at which the brain has developed the capacity to systhesise and reproduce language. In this case, the child is understanding a lot of what's being said, just not reproducing themselves. Rate of mental maturation is clearly genetic and has lots of variation around the average.

Great news about the visit ancienthistrionics, very promising and very reassuring!

Great news ancient!
I would second a detailed hearing test too, he can still hear but not clearly enough to reproduce the language properly (we only did it early because I am half deaf myself I wouldn't have thought about it otherwise).

Thanks for that leBFG, I think that what my pead. means.

Glad you had a good HV visit. Please do get his hearing checked properly. Haven't got kids with hearing problems, but we only found out at the screening test at school (Reception class, age 5 as October birthday), that my DS is very long-sighted with a squint. Amazingly he'd been coping (kids tend to by over focussing eyes) and we hadn't noticed ANYTHING wrong with his vision at all. He was reading and writing above average for his age. You think you would know as their parent etc but not always! He's now wearing glasses and having patching treatment for lazy eye. Perhaps it's not quite the same with hearing, but I have learnt from this experience that if there is a small chance of anything important like this being wrong and you are made aware of that small chance get it checked out!!! Luckily at 5 my DS is still young enough for glasses and hopefully patching to have effect but imagine if he hadn't had that screening test....