Support thread for speech and language delay.......

[jaybirdsinginginthedeadofnight]

I know this has been done before on here, but I couldn't find anything recent and am sure there is someone out there going through similar worries to us. So if you want to share your experiences/worries come join me

DD turns 2 in 2 weeks and has no words, not one! She babbles constantly and has added new 'c' 's' and 'th' sounds to her babbling in the last week. Her understanding seems good and she has her own way of letting us know what she wants (point & whinge a lot). She will have her 2 year assessment next week, I intend on broaching the subject of SALT.

I am sooooo anxious about all of this. DD's cousin is 6months older, and as her speech has developed well she seems leaps and bounds ahead of DD

enormouse we had a good experience with NHS SALT if that helps.

And try and ignore the other stuff. I think it was well meant, if rather misguided. You know you have done all the right things.

Hi ya
My DS1 had delayed speech. First word "mama" at 2. Then nothing until "Buzz" at 2.6. He went to SALT, and was then referred to a mainstream nursery which takes 5 children with s&l delay. He started there at 3yrs 4 months with no joining words and only 10 words (half of which he'd made up but meant something). By Christmas (3yr6m) he was joining 3 words together and picking up new words easily. Fast forward to half way through Year 1 and he was discharged from SALT. I thought he would never get there, and would always have very limited speech. He has since been diagnosed with ASD, but just wanted to share really how far he came, being 2 years behind to being level with his peers.

Now...DS2 is coming up to 2yr6m.. and he has 40 odd words, not joining together. So we are awaiting a call from the HV to be put back on the SALT road.
It's really hard, especially when people either say "surely he should be saying more by now" or they say "ahh he'll catch up".

Hi
I have heard my DD1 may have speech delay. The nursery nurse told my step mum (not me) and apparently said that its obvious DD has had no interaction at home. This has angered and upset me. Not least her talking about my child to others and breaking confidentiality, but the wild assumption we do nothing with her at home. We do in fact spend time doing abcs numbers etc. She can name body parts colours count to 15 n tell you what letters are. She can speak in short sentences and although its not fantastic I didn't have any major worries until now. She is 3yo and at her 2year review they redid it 6mth later due to her speech and language, which she then passed. Im quite shocked a nursery nurse would say this (as well as saying DD is a nightmare and has problems walking. She is naughty and does need to adjust to nursery environment as she has only just started. And I've never noticed problems with her walking nor has anyone else). Sorry for the rant.

Gosh blueberry is salt isn't she. Very worrying. My dd had a speech delay/disorder and I think the advice blueberry gave is actually good although the way it was said was very patronising. I remember thinking I do all that anyway when given that advice but then next time I was talking to dd I realised I was using far to many long sentences and I speak really fast. I was shocked to hear a GP said if he doesn't talk what's the point of salt. That's exactly the point. I will watch with interest.

It wouldn't surprise me to know that blueberry is SALT.

This is exactly the attitude i came across with my 3.5 year old DD who had no language.

The SALT therapist took have the session lecturing me to "turn off the TV", "buy a book" and "spend time talking to your DD".
She was deeply insulting and made a lot of gross assumptions about the way I was raising my DD in a sensory poor and neglectful environment.
When she turned to my DD she sat physically trying to pull my DDs toungue with her fingers while my DD was in tears.

We didn't go back. Neither of us wanted to.

I am happy to report that my DD is a teenager now , is happy, outgoing , doing well at school and has normal speech.

DS2 age four has some speech difficulties and has been to SALT. Complete waste of time. DS, who can be somewhat stubborn and obtuse, refused to talk about what she wanted to talk about and she kinda ran out of ideas. I eventually lost my temper with her when she started to hint that he may be on the spectrum (He very definitely is not)

We have used the Hanan book and it was great and slowly DS is overcoming his difficulties - his speech is improving with his confidence. He does sound a little like English is not his first language and its hard not to smile when he makes a word up that will fit just how he feels, especially when he struggles to say the word that he has just made up :). Nursery have suggested a hearing test but I know that there is nothing wrong there either.

I have come to the conclusion that he will catch up with his speech as he seems to have no problems at all in any other area.

My three DDs all had speech therapy - we ended up seeing 9 different SALTs - three were great, three were so-so, and three were bloody awful, rude, condescending and (even worse) useless at communicating with small children.

Despite the great speech therapists we saw, I'm not sure how effective speech therapy actually was. But then I'll never know what would have happened had my DDs not had it.

I worked on the principle that at worst, it'll do nothing.

What I would say is, don't accept group speech therapy. It's completely pointless. I accepted it for DD2, because it had a short wait. For DD3 I said that it was unacceptable. The (very good) SALT off the record agreed with me.

Oh - and I never tried the Hanan book. The title actually upset me, because I felt it implied that I didn't talk to my children.

While I didn't like that post either I think sadly many SALT must see children who don't get much adult interaction. My dm was a teacher in a pretty deprived area and they did get quite a few children turning up in reception who couldn't talk for this reason (and a few who had American accents from watching so much TV! Which would be funny if it weren't so sad.)

A good tip I had was to repeat key words, so say a normal sentence eg "would mini shoe like some milk?" Then repeat something like "mini shoe like milk?" "mmm lovely milk" "here's your milk" and if they attempt the word, however badly, "yes that's right. Milk" etc

I'd really urge anyone with speech concerns to push for a hearing test referral. It really isn't always obvious that they can't hear, as demonstrated by my youngest. He had me, dh, nursery staff and v experienced primary teacher GPs all fooled.

I too am a primary school teacher, I spent 11 years working in an extremely deprived area (I'm currently taking time out to be 'mum' and helping to run the family business).
Yes we did get many children who had not had quality interactions and many (not all) had poor language skills (and I would emphasise language rather than simply speech). These children tended to have many other issues too though. Poor concentration, poor social skills, lack of understanding of boundaries, poor comprehension etc.
The American accent is also a characteristic of ASD.

jelly I am sure you are right, but it is still not appropriate for a SALT to assume that this is always the case when confronted by a non-verbal child.

Sorry no I wasn't suggesting that it was. I meant that actually most speech delayed/disordered don't fit into this category (contrary to so e people's beliefs). It is absolutely wrong for anyone to make assumptions or judgements. Like I said I did all the 'right' things with both children- one had speech disorder- one didn't.

Sorry- I misunderstood. It is very frustrating having children who are late talkers.
I am sure as a teacher you would have tried many approaches with your own child.
My children were late to speech despite their environment too, not because of it.

DS therapist has even said she is going to steal some of the ideas I used with him ha!
It is very frustrating when you hear some attitudes towards it.

jelly could you share some of your ideas?
Hi pennie

I've ordered some of the books suggested on here so will have a leaf through them this weekend. And have got the ball rolling on the nhs referral via HV too. She was very sympathetic when I spoke to her over the phone and didn't repeat any of the things that go without saying. As she had seen DS1 getting lots of interaction when she had been checking on DS2.

Over lunch dp and I made a list of the words DS1 knows and its close to 35. We were discussing whether we had ever heard DS say 'bye' and DS started waving and saying 'buh bye, buh bye'' . So I feel a bit more positive on the whole. And am just waiting on a callback from the private therapist.

It is very interesting to hear your thoughts on speech therapists. I had applied to study speech and language pathology at uni but had to defer entry due to the arrival of DS2. I hope I can be one of the good ones when I (eventually) graduate.

Hi enormouse of course I can. I don't claim to be an expert in speech therapy and I just did what worked for us. Also my DS is five now so may be a little further ahead than what some of yours are ready for but I'm happy to share anything that either myself or the therapist have used. Also my DS only has problems with articulation, so I haven't had to deal with any language issues.

The particular thing out therapist was talking about was when she was trying to help DS with his self awareness and self monitoring if his sounds. He was getting a big fed up at thus point and not liking being asked to say whether husband sounds were 'good' or being told if they were not quite so good! I just made a little set if traffic lights (just a red, yellow and green circle onto a lolly stick). I began big letting DS monitor me first so I would make deliberate mistakes and ask him to Schoenberg me a traffic light to Shia his well I'd made the sound. He enjoyed this and if took the pressure off him for a bit. Then I moved to me monitoring him and finally to him listening to a recording of himself and showing his own traffic lights.

When he was younger, we were advised to do lots of things like blowing bubbles, playing recorders, whistles etc to improve oral muscles.
Using a mirror was helpful too so he could see what his mouth looked like for particular sounds.

I used the website www.mommyspeechtherapy.com at lot. There was information about the process of speech therapy which really helped me to understand how to build up to using a sound so e.g. They have to be able to produce the sound in isolation first, then with vowel sounds, next words, onto sentences, stories and finally in conversation.

We've done all sorts over the last few months; treasure hunts for words, burying the words in sand, blu taking them to a magnetic fishing game and getting him to catch them, placing them under skittles, bingo games, just basically using any games we have too eg buckeroo- DS can use a piece when he say the word, sound, sentence etc.
Hope some of that is useful to someone.

Great ideas jelly you should write a book Do you have any tips for younger LO's? I'm not very imaginative, I did however buy DD some new books she is loving brown bear brown bear, and since it arrived 2 days ago she has brought it to me 10 times to read to her, I know it by heart, haha. But she loves pointing out the animals, and the tiger who came to tea is also a firm favourite. Anyone have any other book recommendations? We need to inject some life into our library.

Also jelly great website

I just felt I had to point out that blueberryupsidedown has always seemed to give good advice on other threads about speech, as far as I remember she is not a SALT, and the part of her post saying that no words at 16 months isn't a speech delay, was probably referring to the poster who had the 16 month old, not the OP. Sorry but, I think everyone is being a bit harsh.

hazey do you have a child with speech delay?

Yes, which was why I had a look at the thread! I was going to post, and read through, and just thought everyone piled on blueberry a bit and, had come across her posts before and thought I would point out that as far as I am aware, she isn't a SALT.

Anyway, I probably should have shrugged and not posted. I apologise if I have upset anyone.

What blueberry does for a living is no concern of mine! Pretty sure he/she is able to post on here again should he/she need to clarify what was said or apologise for the tone of it. I felt that the tone of the post was extremely patronising. The comments about the iPad and nursery replacing adult one-on-one time etc etc Yes the advice on speech was good but for me a little redundant after 2years as believe me I do everything I can to help DD day in day out. Now can we please put the blueberry issue to bed, and allow the thread to continue for what it was intended? A support for those of us with a LO with a speech and language delay..........

Sorry painty cross posted with you, you put it much more eloquently