My DD turned 3 in April, so she's 3 years 1 month. She was a very late walker - 32 months (I've put this is months to be precise). It was thought in the end to be down to very hypermobile hips.
Her speech seemed about normal around 2, putting 2-3 words together like 'it's stuck' and 'just a baby'.
Since the start of the year I've been more concerned and I think she has an expressive language delay. She can answer things that are right in front of her like "What's that?" (Cat) "What noise does a cat make?" (Meow) She will say up to 5 words together now eg "Hey! What you doing here?" when she isn't expecting to see someone at home. She will say basic questions like "What's that noise?" "Where it gone?" and phrases like "take it off", "come on then" "let's go" - all in context.
Receptive language she generally understands what I'm asking her to do, where we're going, time for a bath, time for bed etc. for all familiar things.
She can read numbers 1-9 and generally know animals and everyday nouns (chair, toothbrush, tree etc) and verbs.
My concerns:
- completely muddles up pronouns when referring to herself "We want" for "I want", "Help you" for "Help me". She occasionally uses "I" but it seems to be more "we/you" now.
- No conversation flow, she can't answer questions about what she did at pre-school at all or anything else we have done. She knows her name and will say it throughout the day but very rarely answers "What's your name?" and "How old are you?". She doesn't answer anything like "How are you?" "Did you have fun?" "Who did you see today?" "What would you like to eat?"
- Uses a lot of single words still to request things, so although will go max 5 words in a sentence, it's still "cheese?" (as in asking for the food) "more juice?" etc
She's just started pre-school and I did say when she started I feel her language is behind and she's under the Paediatrician for mainly the walking but they do look at overall development. When we saw them at the end of last year, I said a few things she could say but she wouldn't speak at all when there and they noted her speech as "developing" and didn't suggest any referrals around speech. I wasn't really concerned back then as she was 2.5 ish and also she does make constant progress, learning new words often everyday but now at 3 just seems behind.
I feel that she's been very focused on learning to walk so a lot of her energy has gone into gross motor and she hasn't had the experience that being mobile gives you i.e. she's always been in the buggy until recently. Covid has meant almost zero social interaction with other children and she responds to them so much better, hence starting at pre-school and we're doing lots of social activity.
The Paediatrician will review her in December and we have an open appointment for then (i.e. only if we feel she needs it) and I'm wondering if it would be best to wait until then as she could make good progress in 6 months now with lots of social interaction and just generally getting out more.
I had a look on the local NHS SALT website and they're on a very limited virtual service still with huge waiting lists, although you can self refer still but waiting a year almost seems pointless. I even looked at private SALT, there's a couple locally but they're all online still at the moment too.
I've googled about walking and language delay and it comes up with lots of info around autism, especially the reverse pronouns but she doesn't fit any of the sensory issues at all, she's always been very sociable and lots of eye contact, always waved, clapped, pointed etc. She does like to line things up and organise them but seems to be doing this less and less and does role play like looking after her dolly.
I'm just wondering if she sounds like anyone else's child and if they've been diagnosed with anything. When I look a speech targets, she often meets them all as she has a fair bit of language and does make short sentences but it's the no conversation flow and not answering questions that concerns me.