2.5 year old speech delay

[MumJ88]

My son is 2 years and 5months old and is still babbling. He tries so hard to speak to us and we just can’t understand his babble. He has a handful of 1 syllable words, for example- Mum, Dad, Nan, no, yeah, more. Some one syllable words he drops the last letter for example, dog is ‘daww’. My main concern is he can’t seem to say any 2 syllable words, if he attempts to he drops either the first or last syllable, for example - baby is ‘baa’, dinosaur is ‘sore’, water is ‘ter’, we encourage him to say Mummy and Daddy but he just calls us Mum and Dad. He can say ‘mum’ and ‘me’ but can’t say ‘mummy’.

His understanding is very good, he follows directions well if we ask him to do things. He must know a lot of words in his head as we ask him to point to things in a book he does so correctly- he just can’t say the words. He goes preschool 3 times a week so we’re hoping that brings his speech along.

We raised our concerns with the HV when he turned 2. They sent him for hearing test which came back fine. We also paid for private hearing test when he first turned 2 as the nhs wait was so long, that also came back fine.
They have just started him with speech therapy but due to covid it is not face to face - they send me YouTube videos to watch with guidance what to do to encourage speech. It’s a bit ridiculous really and not the help which I think he needs. I’d like him to see a therapist in person.

I have done research and came across Apraxia of speech, verbal dyspraxia and phonological speech disorder. He ticks some of these boxes but not all, so not 100% sure if has got any of these.

I just wondered if anyone’s had similar experiences. What advice have you got? When did your child begin to speak. Any success stories etc.

Thanks

Hello,
My little boy was very similar and was eventually diagnosed with a speech sound disorder at 3. Can you afford private speech therapy? We really couldn't but just about managed to finance weekly sessions. This was a huge turning point for us. Im afraid the NHS support was shocking and this was before covid. My little boy is now 5 (nearly 6) and is mostly understood by everyone. He is just missing a few sounds now and still receiving some private therapy input. It's a slow process but the help we had from the private therapist was essential.

@Burtrix7 thank you so much for replying. I think we are going to have to go down the private speech therapy route too, we’ll have to scrape some money together somehow to make it happen, as the NHS support just isn’t good enough.
It’s great your son is understood now, it gives me hope for my son. Can you remember what age your son started to say more words and started speaking in sentences?

Hi @MumJ88
We are in the same situation with our son. He is 20 months and still just babbling.
We also found the nhs support shocking and had the same thing with the YouTube videos which honestly I could have just found on google.
We are doing private speech therapy which is honestly so expensive and I'm not even sure it's making a difference. We are going to start nursery in January when he is 2.

My 3.5YO is similar to a lesser extreme. I will say that her speech continues to improve massively and I'm optimistic that she will be all caught up in time for school. I did go private with mine for a couple of sessions but thankfully in our area the wait for nhs tx wasn't long. What I found helped was researching what about her speech was 'atypical' (for us it was not having the required number of sounds for her age, missing the first consonants off multiple words and 'backing' lots of words) I then called our nhs speech tx department and made these concerns very clear with them and in 5 minutes they had her on the waiting list. I wouldn't mess about with HV or nursery too much as for us they were both pretty useless and just tried to pass the buck to each other The only thing I'd say do is insist through HV that hearing is tested. In general what I've found helps with mine is to be honest but apologetic when you really can't understand them and try to resist guessing what they want. In infants it'a absolutely fine to 'humour them' initially as what they're really learning at that age is how to chat. It sounds like your LO gets this and what they really need help with is pronounciation. I don't correct mine as this is just a bit belittling but I do pretend to not understand until she says it right eg 'what do you mean the bone is ringing?' 'Ohhhh you meant the PHone is ringing. I understand much better when you say it clearly'. Ultimately I think contact your HV directly and I would hope they'll organise assesment, consider at least a one off private initial assessment if you have the funds and get hearing checked. Don't panic though. Most kids do catch up by school age xx

My little girl is exactly the same.. she was 2 in August. She comes up to me babbling like crazy, hand gestures and everything like I'm supposed to know what she's saying 🤦🏼‍♀️.. she isn't behind in any other way.. her understanding is all there (when she wants it to be 😂) we've even started potty training and it's going really well.. I just want her to talk!.. she has about 5 words.. no, yes, hiya, dada, mumma, nana.. and she will say 'hiya dadda' but not where near where she needs to be 😭😭

I saw today on mrs hinch's Instagram stories that her son Ronnie (age 2 years 3 months) has some kind of speech delay though she also mentioned tantrums so don't know whether there is a behavioural aspect to it too.
I wish she would talk about it more and lift the lid on how common this kind of thing is, what she is doing to help, etc etc...