Hello, I have a son of nearly 4 (turns 4 at the end of this month) who has some delayed speech development. I have noticed that he cant process or answer properly to the majority of the simple questions that we ask. For example today he was playing with one of those superhero toys and I asked him 'what is X doing?' he answered 'flying'. I said 'ok so X is flying in the air and where is he flying to?' he said 'he is going home' I said ' ok...so what do you think he will do when he reaches home?' At this point he fumbled and said some jumbled up stuff which I didnt understand. This happens quite a lot, I mean I feel either he isnt bothered to answer any more or he doesn't process the question properly to reply coherently. However he is mostly fine with the easier ones like ' Where are you going' he will correctly reply 'I am going upstairs' etc. He really doesnt get the slightly complex 'What/when/where' types of questions and indeed very less of 'Why/How' types.
He himself asks a lot of questions but mostly words them incorrectly. For eg 'How is M coming today?' Now I know that he is not really interested to know whether M is coming walking or by car but that what actually he wants to know is When M is going to come or perhaps Why M is coming. So I model him back the question and say 'Oh do you want to know When M is coming? She will come after having her lunch'. He seemed happy with the answer.
He understands most of the things which is said to him specially as an instruction, is sociable and loves to play with similar aged and older children and just like any other 4 yr old boy apart from this speech issue. He does a lot of imaginative play with lots of talking etc but many of those are babbles and jumbled up words. He can vocalise his thoughts and needs excellently in 5-6 word sentences for eg - mummy there's a spider in my room, can you get it away? He has improved leaps and bounds in his speech in the last few months without any intervention but lags quite a bit in the aforementioned areas.
He is under SLT assessment and they will contact his pre-school to do any therapy in the near future.
But do you think I can help him in any way? Have any of you got experience of such a condition and has it gone better?
Sorry for the long post and thanks a lot for reading.