Speech development in my speech delayed 27 month old.

[HeyDuggeesFavouriteSquirrel]

I've posted a few times about my son's speech delay so apologies for another post.

He is 27 months old and started saying words just after he turned two. He can now say quite a lot and can count to ten, do his ABCs, say lots of animals and animal sounds, body parts, food, exclamations etc. Not many of the words are clear but he’s very consistent in using the same sound or approximation for a word so I know that it ‘counts’ as a word - eg 'ish' for fish, 'ig' for pig. He can’t put two words together in a sentence and he can really only say words with one syllable or he’ll shorten to one syllable eg giraffe is ‘raffe’.

However he doesn’t use 'everyday' language eg milk, water, bottle. Doesn't even say mummy and daddy or use anyone else's name. He can communicate for things non verbally by pointing or taking me to them.

He doesn't use language much to communicate or be social. He can say hi, bye and night night (though not clearly) but if you ask him a question (eg do you want food, water, sleep) he’ll say no to everything. He has a few action words like ‘off’ to turn the tap off or ‘stuck’ but it’s mostly nouns.

He only really labels things like when we’re looking in a book or he’ll show me a toy and say ‘dog, woof’ for example. My mum says but this is communicating even though he isn't conversational or really using functional language.

I was worried for a long time that he was autistic due to family history and him showing several red flags. But he has grown out of most of those red flags and now scores zero on the MCHAT. His receptive language and non-verbal communication is great.

Am I over thinking this? It’s so much progress from where we were and I'm so happy he's finally making speech sounds.

Really sorry but I can't remember if you said that he'd been referred to SLT yet? If not, I definitely think it's worth trying there first as the SLT may refer him if she suspects ASD.

@PanicBuyingSprouts sorry I should have said. He's in speech therapy once a week. SLT doesn't think it's ASD, neither does the paeditrician.

Hi Op, my son is 25 months and sounds similar to yours but a few months behind of course! Have you had a look at Developmental Language Disorder? I haven't had autism ruled out as my sons cause yet but depending on the outcome of that I would start looking into DLD.

@Justbecause88 this sounds like a definite possibility for my DS.

I think some of it sounds like a fairly normal order for speech development – mostly nouns at first, words unclear/incomplete, things shortened to one syllable, quite a few animals/animal sounds in the mix. The SLT should know if some of the details are a bit unusual, e.g., his words are incomplete in the opposite way to my daughter's ('duck' was 'duh', bear was 'beh', etc.), but I don't know if that means anything, or just some children do it one way and some the other.

Having very little everyday language and not really using language functionally seems a bit more unusual to me, but perhaps that's just his next step, if he's recently acquired a lot of words? If you saw a dog on a walk, would he say 'dog' as he pointed to it or anything like that, to draw your attention to the dog? What would he do if you gave him two choices (words you know he can say, 'apple or banana' or whatever), but without anything to point at?

@skkyelark he would point and say dog. But if I said to him apple or banana he would either ignore the question or say no. Even if I offer him TV or something he'd say no though he doesn't mean it.

He does follow instructions and commands so he definitely understands. But if for example I say 'can you turn the light off' he would just do it, he wouldn't say yes. He can't actually say yes, only no.

His attention is great and the SALT says it's good that he can focus for a whole 45 min session. Plus he transitions easily between tasks in therapy.

That's great that he's focusing and interacting with the SALT so well.

If he points and says dog, I think I'd agree with your mother and class that as communication as long as he seems to be looking for a response from you when he does it (to make sure you've seen the dog, for you to confirm that yes, it's a dog, anything). I was thinking back, and I think quite a lot of my DD's early talking was communication, but mostly her exclaiming something and our responding – lots of pointing at bird and cars and exclaiming, plus 'more', 'done', and 'stuck!' when she'd got herself or something stuck and needed rescuing. Does your DS use 'stuck' and 'off' like that? I'd definitely count that as functional communication.

My DD would answer yes or no questions at that stage (mostly accurately, some days everything was 'no!'...), but I'm not sure if that's typical or not. She answered by nodding/shaking her head before answering verbally, I think. With choices, will he choose by pointing? If he does, I would think he has the essence of the communication (Mum asked me a question, I answered it) and hopefully the answering verbally will happen soon, now his words are coming along.

@skkyelark yes for 'off' I was playing music he didn't like and he said 'off' he also used it when I tried a halloween costume on.

He can shake his head no but never said nods.

He will choose by pointing. It's hard I really don't know what he's thinking!

We had very similar experience with our DS, he only used 1-2 words to name/point things but didnt name a lot of very common things that you would expect, even around 4X months and even when he did we couldn't understand him lot of times.

He was not interested in stories and books, and however hard we wanted we couldnt achieve progress in his speech, he just didnt seem to care.

I also did all mchat etc. tests, with exactly the same results as you. Otherwise he was always perfect socially, playing games, emotional attachment etc. all good.

Even the speech therapist told us he has severe speech delay, he is in the last 0.X percent.

And then close to the age of 4(!) he just started to talk in full sentences with proper grammar.

Thank you @flowww that's good to know.

How is ur baby now?

Hi there! Yes, my son has just turned four. He is now caught up with other children and speaks in full, grammatically correct sentences. He still has quirks and is obsessed with the alphabet and numbers. Taught himself reading skills and maths skills at an early age.

He went to preschool last year and is in reception now. School was the turning point for him and really furthered his language development.

I now have another son and I will start him in nursery earlier than I did my oldest.

He only just started to understand things at 22 months.

Hi hope you are well .. no asd concerns for your eldest ?

Hi there, my son is now 5.5 and has completely caught up. Speech is normal and no ASD.

Thank you so much for your answer can you please help me with my little girl ?
So my little girl is 25 months and has lots of words and for a few months now she has started to string 2/3 words together to make a sentence , especially if prompted . More often than not she uses single words to make requests . I am aware this is not normal but she can ask questions like “ where’s daddy “ what happened ? Whats that sound ? And she can answer those questions like if I ask where’s daddy ? She replies “ kitchen “ what color is dolly ? She says the correct color . What’s mommy doing ? She replies correctly like cleaning or cooking . Who’s that ? In pictures etc
My concern is that she uses single words when making a request and she is not fully conversational , .
She is social and engages with both people and kids to some extent .
When speaking fast she uses gibberish and that’s a sign of speech delay .

@Ladybug1235 Is your children at school or nursery? That's what I found really helped.