Advice - 2.5yo DS speech delay

[Kated16]

Hi,

My 2.5 year old DS has a moderate to severe speech delay. We had an assessment with a NHS SALT & he will have 3 sessions of therapy starting in January. She is also referring him to a paediatrician as he is showing some autism red flags (lack of speech, hand flapping when excited) we were told there is currently up to a years waitlist.

I have the "it takes two to talk" book which i am reading & finding very useful but i feel a little overwhelmed at where to begin, there is a lot of information to digest!

Would be really grateful for some advice/tips of what really helped progress your DS/DD's speech.

Thanks

So sorry that you are having to wait so long. If ASD is suspected, diid you suspect it after doing the m-chat?

I’m probably the worst one to advise you on speech delay if I’m honest. My DD was really late with speech. Talking Point have sone free resources here which might help. Try the I Can Help enquiry service too.

As for the Paed’s appointment, would paying privately be an option?

J

JiltedJohnsJulie thanks for your reply!

His mchat result was low risk. Paying privately is a option, the SALT recommended waiting for NHS as said if he did require further support, extra funding etc most of the time they require a NHS diagnosis rather than private.

Hi Kated

We have a 3 year old awaiting diagnosis, and a younger one who may follow the same path.

Although a bit younger than yours at the time, the best thing we did was a private SALT, who seemed to understand our concerns, and our child, much better than the nhs salt who had a lot less time to see dc. It wasn’t cheap- about £80/hr/fortnight. We will be taking dc2 along soon!

We actually did pecs for a short while which, luckily for us, seemed to really help ds1 understand the purpose of communication and led to speech shortly after. This obviously will not be the case for everyone.

You may know all this already, but we were also told:

• never to ask him to speak or repeat things and avoid asking questions.
• give descriptions and leave pauses in case he fills them. Eg “this is a.... car”. Praise if there is anything at all in the gap.
• narrate everything he is doing and use only single words where possible. Eg, he picks up a toy lion, then puts on table, we say “lion. Roar. Table”.
• read stories, particulary rhymes, and leave a pause before the last word of a line and see if he fills them.

Sorry if that’s a bit patronising. Good luck!

Oh, and lots of “ready, steady...”(wait for eye contact) “..GO!”

Hi wwwomble

Thanks for your reply. We did have an assessment with a private salt. What sort of things did they do with you/your dc? Was it mainly giving you ideas to do with your dc?

Hadn't heard of pecs before but just had a quick google, definitely think it will be worth a try!

Well we asked for an assessment largely because we thought we wanted to try pecs, but from what we’d read we wanted to do it properly, and not bodge it. So the first block of sessions had that as the aim.

You can find online the different pecs stages- we only went through the early stages. She would show us what to do and we would go away and practice, then we’d move onto the next stage when he’d got it. (Food was his motivator. He ate a lot of raisins during that time!)

Really though, most of the time was spent playing. He was only 18 months when we started and wasn’t very interactive, so it was about trying to encourage that, and improving his focus. She was brilliant at interacting so we’d try and copy her approach.

There were things like, if pushing on a swing, wait for eye contact between pushes. Or making sure we had the next bit of whatever he was playing with so he had to get it from us, and making that a game.

And really, really enforcing the stuff I mentioned above.

Sorry I can’t be more specific. It’s difficult to remember exactly.

We don’t see her anymore. We are lucky that his speech is pretty good now. The main thing she left us working on is turn taking- as much as possible as it’s crucial to communication and apparently a problem for most kids with asd.

Sorry, just realised you said he scored low risk on the m-chat. Most of that probably doesn’t apply to you!

Hi, my ds is just over 2 and half and has severe speech delay, he has been under SALT for a few month and the paeds who seem to assess him once a year!!! I'm concerned he may be on the spectrum as he does a lot of hand flapping too when excited, likes to spin round in circles and obsessed with wheels. The doctor and hv don't seem to think it's autism but I'm not convinced, he goes to class once a week with SALT with other children and they do a lot of pictures first of the activity they are going to do, makaton signs and lot of ready steady go to get them to make eye contact. My ds is delayed with his development in general but his speech does now seem to be coming on since he had his tonsils out.