My dd has developed a stammer/stutter over the last month or so. To begin with, it was at the end of the day and we assumed it was because she was tired - however, it is now pretty much constant and has got to the point where she goes red in the face and is almost crying with the effort to get the word out. Anything beginning with J, M or N gives her real problems.
Her actual language itself is not massively advanced either - I've been a bit ostrich-like with this, telling myself not to compare her to others, that they're all developing differently, but a trip last week with her nursery group just brought home how far behind she is with her peers in terms of making sentences. Her key worker didn't seem to think there was a problem, but then she didn't notice the stammer either til I pointed it out to her, so my confidence in her is not high...
dd does understand everything we say to her, and will, on occasion, come out with a word and surprise us (eg in a few weeks ago she ate a biscuit, grinned at me and said 'that was delicious') but these times are few and far between and in fact in the last week or so she appears to be regressing, communicating by squeaking and grunting.
Anyway, we have self-referred to our local speech therapy and language centre and are waiting for an appointment - we've been told it won't be more than 6 weeks, and given her age it may be sooner, as they go in for early intervention.
In the meantime, I'm wondering whether or not it's worth contacting the GP (getting an appointment is all but impossible) about her hearing. I've again put this off in the past because it seemed like a mildly ridiculous thing to say - 'doctor, doctor, my child hears too well', but she is constantly asking 'what's that noise', putting her hands to her ears and in some cases screaming because the noise is upsetting her so much (in particular Tesco's beeping checkouts, for some reason - other supermarkets don't have the same effect).
Could this be having an effect on her language? I looked it up on't net but couldn't find a lot of info one way or the other. I was thinking I should maybe try and see the GP before the speech therapist assessment, so that I have all the info available, but I don't know if it's going to be worthwhile or not - it's so hard getting an appointment and at the moment I'm so stressed (I just feel like crying all the time at the mo) over dd's self-frustration at not being able to say what she wants that I don't know what to do.
Anyone else had to go through this? Any ideas?