3 year old speech delay

[lyssie29]

Hi my DD was 3 in October and I still can't understand about 50%of what she says. She had glue ear but that's recently cleared in the past few months but I don't feel like her speech getting any better since then. S&L assessed her and said they were happy because she's talking more (when they first saw her she was so shy she hardly spoke) and that they won't be seeing her anymore. Personally I feel like she will be way behind when she starts nursery in January. If I can't understand what she says how can the teachers? She will say things like I'm minicked instead of I'm finished and sometimes what she says sounds nothing like the words at all and I can't figure it out and she will get very frustrated and sometimes starts crying. What sort of things can I do and has anyone had children start nursery with speech delay? How did they get at school?

LOADS of children start Nursery with speech delay. Being around other children often helps them make progress. Very often, Nursery staff will put little activities in place to help.
If she has had glue ear then she has been missing sounds for a long time. You would probably need to work on listening skills before worrying too much about her expressive language. In a Nursery they would do things like sound lotto, and barrier games (for example playing different musical instruments out of sight and the children have to identify which one it is) and then move on to things like sorting objects or pictures according to initial sound..... (get a pile of things that being with 'm' and a pile that begin with 's', then label them, really emphasising the 'm' or 's' "mmmmmmitten" or "sssssock" and they decide if each one fits in the 'm' circle or the 's' circle. Those 2 sounds are really different, but once she has the idea of the game, you can refine to doing with more similar sounds, working up to things like 't' and 'c' which sound really similar.
Also when you are out and about, keep drawing attention to things you hear - bird, plane, siren, water running, clock ticking, etc etc., label everything (in house as well, microwave pinging, doorbell, phone, text a lert etc.)
Do lots of rhyming - songs, poems, children's story books, silly made up lists of 'tin / pin / bin / fin /sin / win' etc.

Have a look at Talking Point website for lots of advice and ideas.

My dd has speech delay and things sped up at about 3.5 years and since then she’s done really well at school and crazily has always been one of the more able. We got private SALT as there was a long wait. It worked really well for us.
Is it pronunciation problems alone or does she also struggle putting words together too?

Sorry with regards to nursery- they tried to mirror some of the activities done with the SALT and they were excellent.

@backforgood thank you for the info. I'll check the website out now ☺️

@Nsbgsyebebdnd she is fine at putting words together. It's more just pronunciation of the words. She can talk and talk away and I think she's talking nonsense but once I figure out the words she's trying to say they all make sense. I did mention to her nursery about her speech delay and they told me they would do their own assessment and refer to speech and language as needed but she was referred already at 2 years old because she was saying no words at all except mama. That's when they also did a hearing test and found she had glue ear. I'm glad to know that they do some of the activities with her. I was afraid she would be left behind somehow.

I would chat through your concerns with the nursery. If anything I think it helped my dd (she pretty much caught up at about 3.5 years I think). It sounds like the glue ear will likely have affected how she hears sounds and so I think a SALT could be great for her. If you can fund it I’d suggest seeing someone privately. The SALT would work on a speech sound each week and amazingly after the activities (and doing them at home) she would switch her way of hearing a sound and subsequently the way she said it. My daughter had a few pronunciation issues and we would work through them each week. It made a huge difference to her speech and I think subsequently her development.