4.5 year old - potential speech problems and not sure what to do.

[ceebeegeebies]

DS2 is 4.5 and is due to start school in September. It has recently dawned on me that he sounds more like a 3 year old than a 4.5 year old in terms of his speech. His vocabulary and the sentences/phrases he comes out with are excellent but the way he talks just seems babyish. It is difficult to describe as I don't think he is particularly struggling with pronounciation - it just sounds babyish.

Me and DH occasionally have to ask him to repeat what he is saying as we can't understand him so clearly I am concerned that school will be an issue. Nursery have never mentioned an issue with it but he goes to a private nursery rather than a pre-school so I am not sure the staff are as qualified to spot potential issues.

Anybody any experience of this and advice as to whether it is worth doing something about it now or wait to see if school think there is an issue?

Does your LA have any drop-in Speech and Language services? Your HV team might know about them if you contact them.

Thank you, I might try that.

The other issue which I forgot to put in my OP is that he is very shy around strangers so is unlikely to speak in front of anyone who can assess him

I think I would speak to HV or even DS's nursery...
My DD2 was late starting to speak - coming up for 2.5 (had been to HV) and didn't speak to other adults (even though she was in preschool) until she was more than 3....
We struggled to understand her - which she found a bit frustrating - so I brought it up with (school) nursery at 3.5 and she was referred to speech & language therapy
The main problem she had was starting to talk so late meant she was behind but she had a really good (actually advanced) vocabulary and sentence structure - which emphasised errors in pronunciation. (A two year old doesn't try to say as complex things as a three year old - if that makes sense.) She would have got there in the end anyway but they didn't want her to get frustrated...
One major concern was difficulties learning to read phonetically -but actually this was never a problem for her ...she could tell the differences in sounds even though she couldn't say them...
(Just turned 6 -stopped speech and language therapy last Christmas and was moved up a reading group in October (before that her speech had held her back))
Good luck - maybe it is just your perception (I couldn't understand what DD2 was telling me the other day - and it was mainly because it was completely unrelated to where we were, what we were doing etc)...but good to get a second opinion...

Because you both understand him quite well, he is probably not bothering to make much of an effort. When you don't understand him, rather than say pardon I didn't understand that, I would say, I didn't hear you, can you tell me that again - ie. without making him conscious that he's not getting it right. He should on the second attempt try and be a lot clearer. Also I am sure you already know that any words that are unclear should be clearly repeated to him (without sounding too much like a parrot - ie. you don't want him to know he keeps getting it wrong all of the time, because it might knock his confidence).

I found that when my DS started school, his speech kept on improving, as to a certain extent they do copy each other, and let's face it, little reception children that don't understand what's been said by one of their peers will very bluntly say what??

As Starlight says, always good to see a Speech Therapist to help or just put your mind at rest.