Feeling stressed - 2.9yo being referred for SALT - how is your 2.9yo's speech?

[lunavix]

After a discussion with HV and Pre-school, ds is being referred for audiology (soory uif thats not the right word) and SALT. I know it's a bit pathetic but it has quite upset me - I know he's not 'sick' and he doesn't seem to have any health problems, but I feel dreadful as I didn't think anything was wrong.

What is your lo's speech like?

I explained ds talks for hours, but we can only understand key words, and sometimes sentences. Eg while being told off 'daddy no tell 'ds' off' but apparently not saying proper sentences, talking about himself mostly in the third person, and that isn't normal.

I can't believe I didn't realise.

I understand how you feel. We had a discussion at ds's daycare last week about his speech and I feel the same. I thought he was doing ok.

So ds is 2.10. He was a little slow to start talking but now talks and sings almost incessantly. I can understand what he's saying. dh can mostly too but I'm not sure that others can. ds does refer to himself using "I" and "me". He says short sentences, asks questions and can describe to me things that have happened.

With him the issue seems to be that there are certain sounds that he cannot pronounce clearly, e.g. "c" "k" and "ck" as in "car", "look" "mickey", "tt" is the middle of words like "button", "th", "r" and some others. Also when he's very excited or has some complicated to explain to you he gets a bit flustered and sort of stutters and nothing comes out right. The staff at his daycare tell me that they find it difficult to understand him and that he is not pronouncing words correctly there either. In our case there is a slight complication that we live in Switzerland and at daycare he speaks Swiss German. Dh and I are both English and since we speak English at home I don't know whether the problem is worse at daycare because of the language, or worse at daycare because of the number of children and his need to try and get the words out quickly to get attention or whether it's not really anything to worry about at all.

Sorry bit of a waffle there I think and nothing of any practical help at all but I wanted to reply because your first paragraph struck a chord with me.

Thanks for that.

Yes it's actual sounds that seem to be a problem with ds too. He doesn't seem to hear them, so he can't repeat them.

Not any expert, but am interested (applying for SALT course atm.) Hope all turns out to be well.

Can I recommend that, once you have been referred, you ring the audiology department you have been referred to and find out how long the waiting list for audiology is? For adults it can be really shockingly long (think years), though for children they ought to get their skates on. Just so that you have some idea.

Must be something in the air - I had this discussion with DS nursery, (he's 2.10 months) so I am looking for a SALT referral now. Oh and DS speech sounds somewhat behind those of your kids

until the last month i was the only person who seemed to understand dd who is just 3 all her friends seemed to speak a lot better than her and she was slower than them at talking

then as if overnight she suddenly started talking in proper sentences and much more clearly other people can now understand her about 90% of time

however when she gets excited she stutters and has trouble getting her words out and there are times when i dont really understand her either

she has problems pronouncing certain letters s and f been the main ones but i have a lisp so maybe its because i dont say them clearly

last time we were at the hospital - she has 6 week appts for other health problems the dr there mentioned her speech being behind and then nursery commented on her letters the other day - they do phonics at her school so she is having problems

i never really worried about it before just thought all children develop at different ages and 2 / 3 is still very young