2.5 year old - speech delay? Please advise.

[CarrieBlu]

Looking for advice from anyone who has experienced similar situations regarding slow speech development with their DC please.

My DD is 2 and a half, she babbled early on and has always been quite vocal - said her first words as expected etc. When she was around 2 she began linking words together - Daddy at work, counting to five,although it was limited to a few phrases. After doing that for a month or so, she stopped and for months has now only said singular words again, and is still very ‘babbly’, seemingly just talking in her own language. She won’t use words such as please, thank you, or more, but does know the names of lots of people, animals and objects.

It sounds awful but I have become reluctant to take her anywhere as she often has huge meltdowns as we just can’t communicate with each other - she knows what she wants to do but can’t communicate with me about it and then has a tantrum if I can’t or won’t let her do something. It’s usually at play groups and I feel like other parents are judging her behaviour and seeing her as a ‘handful’, when in reality she’s actually a really sweet, lovely, gentle and kind child, but we’re just stuck in a rut when it comes to her speech and development.

I don’t know what to do really, I feel like I’m failing her. I want to help her and I’m not sure what to do. Her friends all have very established speech and are able to hold conversations with their caregivers, despite sometimes being younger than my DD. I just don’t know what’s right for her age group and development stage.

Please advise me on how to help my daughter.

I would go and see your HV.
Or, if she goes to Nursery, arrange to talk to staff at Nursery.
Or both.

Talking Point is a fab site to look round to find anything to do with Speech and Language Development. You can even arrange a phone appointment with a Speech and Language Therapist.

Thank you, I think I’ll try calling a speech therapist as you suggested. The HV at our local surgery is really strange and hasn’t been helpful in the past unfortunately. Thanks for your advice, I’ll take a look at that website too.

She’s not at nursery at the moment. She’s registered to start pre-school next September.

It could be a regression - if linked to autism they tend to happen between 18M and 24M where an infant looses words, gestures, mannerisms, etc (sometimes referred to as the onset of autism)

However, at this age 70% of all communication is gestures, 23% tone of voice, and only 7% are words, so lack of words should not stop her communicating. How is her gestures and how is she using them to communicate? like pointing to request and share, showing/giving, head nodding, eye contact, tone of voice (to attract and direct attention), etc - a deficit in this area would be more concerning than lack of words.

Also tantrums and meltdowns are two different things; meltdowns can be a red flag for autism (where a child is inconsolable even after offering them the object they wanted, i.e. once they start the meltdown they cannot stop and last 10+ minutes) , while tantrums tend to be short and the child can be easily re-directed by offering them an object of desire.

I recommend you have a look at the MCHAT screener (you can find it online); 20 simple questions to answer to give you an idea of what could be going on. The idea is to get as close to zero as possible - as a reference, a neurotypical 18M toddler would score between 0-2 while a 24M would score 0.