Nearly 3yo delayed speech - any others?

[BeeMyBaby]

Hi, I've posted a fair bit about my DS in the past. He is 35months old and puts two words together, three if you include a name (ie give paper mama, wait me mama). As far as I can tell the majority of other children his age are speaking in fluid sentences now. He's had his hearing tested and it was fine, he had a salt appointment when he was about 28m and they said there was no sign of autism. However we moved to another country so there is no speech support for him. His language does seem to be improving but is about 9+months behind his peers. Anyone else? I guess I just keep waiting and hoping that he's going to suddenly start speaking properly. The majority of his words are very poorly pronounced and I'm the only one who can understand him.

Speech delays are the most common delays in children this age as speaking is a hard skill to master! most delays clear by themselves but it does sound like your son is speech delayed, by your description by about 12 months - he might require private speech therapy if not offered publicly like you mentioned.

Salt is not qualified to make comments on autism so it's surprising that they said that there is no signs of autism. Apart from speech, how is his development so far? at 3 years old with a speech delay he should be a master in gesturing (point, wave, show, give, etc.) to compensate for his lack of words in order to meets his needs and to share interest. Did he point to request/share by 18 months?

Thank you for your reply and it's interesting you think he is as much as 12 months behind. He had big tonsils when he was a baby and was diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea, so I guess I'm waiting to see if he has been left with learning disabilities from overnight oxygen deprivation or if he will catch up. He didn't do much at 18m, as he still had his tonsils and was ill a lot. However he does do a lot of mime now, he can mime that he wants the pencil sharpener, or if he wants to eat, drink, he points to what he wants and he plays well with his sisters. Online it said a speech delay was only in children 18-30months, so I'm not sure what this is called and I'm not sure how to find other parents to talk to about it.

My DS is a little older. He is 39 months, but not much further on in terms of language development. He has no problem putting together words if they are words he has in his active vocabulary, but this is limited, so he would have no chance of saying give paper, because he doesn't have either of these words. He's worked out that please, thank you and sorry will get him just about anything he needs, so he uses those a lot. His understanding is absolutely spot on and we converse a lot, but I feel like it's almost as if I speak to him in one language and he replies in another. While some of what he says can be understood by strangers a great deal of what he says can only be understood by me, or sometimes not even be me, because he substitutes so many words. He has developed a few different work arounds. The main one is overgeneralising, e.g. cake for all sweet food; pear for most fruit. Some words are the sound they make like choo choo, but some are less obvious, like hm hm for dog. He also has some made-up words for some of his favourite things and he can be quite protective about these, as some of them he's been using for two years. He only started saying cat a couple of months ago because he preferred his own word. He calls his marble run ball hole and his train track is choo choo road. When I try to encourage him to use the real word for something that I think is surely easy enough for him to say, he just laughs at me and carries on with his own word. He almost never gets frustrated about language. He has no f or l so he'll just avoid anything that starts with those. I did have him assessed at 28 months - he had less than 100 real English words at that time - and was told he was not behind enough for it to be a worry. There was nothing they could do at that stage, but they would start sound work with him at three and a half. He has definitely come on a lot since then, but it has been a slow build rather than the language explosion that most toddlers experience. So we'll be going back to be assessed in the new year anyway. At least being September born he won't be starting school until he's almost 5 so we have a bit more time to work on it. He does 3.5 days at nursery now and I am sure he thinks he has enough language for everything he needs to do at nursery. So I can't offer any useful advice, but if you are just looking for another parent in a similar boat I would be happy to compare notes.

@BeeMyBaby - That sounds quiet tough, poor little boy, I hope that he is much better now that his tonsils are out, and it does sound quite extreme if it caused brain damage, I hope that is not the case!!

I only said 12 months delayed as what you described is what is expected from a 2 year old, but it could be 9 months too. I think it's worth having him checked by a development ped to rule certain things out, for example many respected studies have shown that a very large number of infants (I think it was 85%) that did not point to share interests (like pointing to a plane in the sky) by 18 months where later diagnosed with autism, not pointing by 2 years was near certain autism. I am not saying that it is autism but worth getting these things checked. I recommend you have a look at the MCHAT if not done already, it's a simple 20 question questionnaire that is highly regarded by professionals (community.babycenter.com/img/badge/badge_friends.svg) and see how he scores. The aim is to score as low as possible, for reference, a typically developing 18 month old scores between 0 and 1 while at 24 month old they score 0.

Sorry the link is wrong above, it should be www.autismspeaks.org/screen-your-child

if everything above checks out have a search for "speech dyspraxia", also very common too in infants of this age.

@sunshineandskyscrapers

My DS says cake for everything and only says pear too. My these are easier words or just the best foods? Mine is 2.5 yrs/ 30 months old, but I'd say a year behind in speech. Apparently he's fine according to everyone. He's just getting there really really slowly, and I wonder if he's a bit behind on most things. It's hard to judge as he's my only and his understanding is great. He seems very inquisitive, but it's applying this he's lacking in. I hate to say that, he's lovely, but for example he couldn't get how to do a game that says age 2, that his female cousin age 18 months picked up immediately from my demos

DD2 was at a similar level of speech - 2 word, very hard to understand phrases when she started her nursery year aged 3, huge amounts of sounds substituted for an easier to say one or missed out altogether. Lots and lots of very animated babbling on so there was obviously something really interesting being communicated going on there! Because of where we lived and nursery not being on the ball we fell through the net and no one did a speech referral at that point (I'm still pissed off about this mildly now).

Started school aged 4 with probably 50% intelligible speech to us as family members tuned into how she said words. School did a lot of input with her and fired off umpteen referrals to get her seen by speech and language - by which point the work school had done had pushed her over the threshold for them to take us on (typical) as her understanding of language is very very good.

Appears that a lot of her difficulties are verbal dyspraxia, plus some general disorganisation in her speech and grammar that tend to be a characteristic of dyspraxic speech in general (she has a dyspraxia diagnosis).

To give you some hope though - pretty much 95% intelligible to everyone speech by the end of her first year at school - still immature sounding at times, and overly-careful getting over sounds she knows she finds harder - but very much someone you could understand and now after a term of fortnightly private speech therapy (and us doing daily work at home) in year 1 her speech is coming on amazingly - she still has sounds she needs to be reminded to articulate correctly (a nice dose of selective hearing goes a long way when we get "duh" instead of "the" when I blooming well know she can say it!) but she's actually very well spoken underneath all the articulation difficulties. Fully able to tell tales on her sister and complain about wanting biscuits at every possible opportunity, very very fond of belting out All I Want For Christmas is You (complete with warbly bits) when she should be asleep in bed and a brilliant sense of comic timing I've never come across in a kid her age!

Interestingly what it HASN'T affected is her ability to read - she's grasped phonics really solidly despite not being able to say half of the sounds she was reading in the initial months!

OP, I have a son with a speech delay although slightly different to how you have described. Could you afford to get the ball rolling with a private therapist maybe someone who can come to you? And address your concerns about his sleep apnea having affected his learning.

@l0v3f00d Do you have a speech therapist that comes to you? I'm really keen to get some private sessions for my DS in the new year, but I don't drive and there is a very limited bus service here. I know I could get a taxi but it seems a lot of expense on top of a session to go there and back. It's put me off enquiring, but if there is some that will come to your home, that might work. I assume the cost depends on area. I'm SE of London.

My nearly 2 1/2 year old has a speech delay due to medical condition.

For the past few months I have been giving him an omega 3 supplement and have noticed the amount of words he is saying as increased

he is only linking two words together occasionally and the majority of the words are really understood by people who see him all the time or in context but I really think the supplement has made a difference.

YouTube also has lots of videos from speech therapists which might help

Does he drool OP or have any difficulties with food?

@AladdinMum I did the mchat test and he got 1, and that was only because I had previously queried his hearing. Yes his tonsils were bad, every time he got ill they grew and he ended up getting a common cold and being drugged up to his eyeballs on morphine etc to sedate him and put on a ventilator for 3 days, followed by a 3 week hospital stay with a tube up his nose to keep his airway open incase he slept at all before he could get his tonsils out. So no idea if the months prior to that episode led to any lasting damage, they are meant to catch up within a year of getting their tonsils out but he's still tiny and far behind with his speech.

@sunshineandskyscrapers they sound similar but at 28m my son had about 20words and has really come on in the last few months so that he now says a variety of two word sentences, but is similar to your DS in over generalising (all fruits are apples), but he's not good with making sounds of animals and has only just started adding this to his repertoire. I think a lot of his intelligible speech comes from trying to pick up phrases from me, as I say 'that one?' and now he says 'omon' to everything which I find a bit embarrassing when out and about as he'll say it over and over especially in shops.

I can't get private speech therapy as we moved to a majority world country so they 1) don't speak the same language 2) unless your leg has fallen off they don't seem to care

I did however look up dr google a lot over the last few days and found that apparently as long as he starts closing words by the time he is 3y3m (4 months away) then it still could be in the normal range, and it said only to panic if he can't do 5 word sentences by the time he's 4 so that gives him a year.

@HexagonalBattenburg that's really interesting what you said about reading, I wanted to start introducing numbers and letters soon but wasn't sure if it would work, this gives me hope!

@user1495739076 thank you for the tip re YouTube, I had looked for apps (very pricey and I'm on a really low income) but had not thought of YouTube videos! He used to drool and couldn't eat solid food before he had his tonsils out when he just turned 2, now he only drools a tiny bit and eats well.