Speech development in 2 1/2 year old DS1 - advice and reassurance needed

[batdog]

I know that all children develop at different stages but I'm beginning to worry (and obsess) about our DS1's speech. He was referred to the local SALT in December and her conclusion was that he was behind in speech development and we were given some hints and tips. He is going to have another referral in February. To be honest I don't think there's going to be much change. He's now two and a half. His speech consists of regularly repeating the same, small vocabulary of words. Most of them are pronounced incorrectly (for example BLUE becomes BOO) - despite weeks and months of trying to correct him. I'm sure we're doing the right things; we were certainly already doing what the SALT advised us to do.

Can anyone give any advice:

1. Good books with advice to help with speech development.
2. General tips we may not have thought of.
3. Reassurance that I shouldn't be concerned - the problem is that all our friend's babies of a similar age (or slightly older) are much more advanced.

Hi
My ds is the same age and although I still haven't managed to gauge where he sits versus average he is definitely not an advanced talker. He has made quite a quick improvement even in the last month or two though so this could be round the corner for your ds.

We've found a few things have helped:

• missing key words out of fave stories so he has to fill in the missing word - which he quite enjoys.
• choices (but I guess you know that one as fairly standard SALT advice?) e.g. do you want to go to bed or have a bath - he then has to say 'have a bath' instead of an open ended question that might leave him not knowing what to say.

• saying do you mean 'boo' or 'blue' when he has mispronounced something is working v well at the moment too. I kind of pretend I don't really understand sometimes.

HTH a little.

I would recommend the following books:-

Debbie Feit, the Parents' Guide to Speech and Language Problems (£10) may well be in your local library anyway. good general book - info and emotional support.

It takes two to Talk (about £30 but very good) by Ayola Manolson - lots of practical advice about children who are late talkers

You Make the Difference (about £13),also very good.

(Lots of people recommend Baby Talk by Sally Ward) I didn't find it very helpful.

Useful websites:-
www.ican.org.uk (they have free DVDs to send off for, you just pay 49p postage)
www.hanen.org

General tips

1. singing - e.g. - this is the way we eat our lunch, eat our lunch eat our lunch etc ad nauseam - as you can get lots of repetition in more naturally

2. keep speech very simple, and repetitive - e.g. you like APPLES? It's a nice APPLE, big and green. We get APPLES at the shop.

3)do a running commentary

Does SALT think his understanding is OK?

Keeping your speech simple is the key as mentioned above and lots of repetition again as suggested above. If he can follow instructions and respond to speech, his own speech should follow. Does he say social phrases like hello or bye bye ( does not matter if badly pronounced) ?

Ok you found a passing SALT (well, sort of ex-salt as haven't been working since birth of first dc 6 years ago!)

At your appointment the SALT would have been looking at various aspects of communication, not just your child's speech. As you don't mention anything but speech I assume his understanding of language/play/social communication were assessed as within normal limits? He she would also look generally at your child's development and refer on to a paediatrician if necessary.

As a general rule you would expect a 2 year old to have around 50 words and be starting to join them into little sentences.

Assuming it is just expressive language that is delayed (the words your ds produces), the focus would be on increasing vocabulary. There are some good suggestions here but I would not do the missing out words in stories - he probably won't be able to do it and you don;t want to make him feel pressured.

I have found the best results with the following:

1. For 30 minutes a day (if possible)get down on the floor and follow your child's lead with play. Don't try to direct what he does during this time. Put out a choice of 4 or 5 different toys. Tea sets are good, dollies, toys which mimic real life, but whatever he likes really. When he does something, tell him what he did, in simple language. So, if he gives teddy a cup of tea, you say "Teddy's drinking tea", "Mmmm, nice tea", "more tea, teddy", and so on, ad nauseum. Simple but effective. Don't talk too fast and don;t use long sentences during the play time.

2. Don't ask him to say things or correct what he said. You can;t teach him to talk, only encourage him by using the right kind of language with him. If he only has a few words you don't need to be worrying about pronunciation yet.

HTH. I DO like the Sally Ward book, Babytalk.

But Ktnoo my ds seems to actually enjoy the filling in the missing words thing (he has a v good memory so maybe that's why he manages it) and we do it in a fun way. In fact I didn't start doing it to improve his speech.
Is that still a bad thing to do if he seems to like it?

Just from personal experience - very similar situation... despite having hearing checked and tested it now transpires 18 months later that dd cant actually hear very well...

Have you had hearing checked? also if you havent you may want to consider a more thorough test than 2 health visitors in a room playing sounds out of an enormous speaker and waving a rabbit in the air if your lo appears to look in the general direction of the speaker ( not bitter you understand!) and being fobbed off by various health professionals including a salt who wrote dh and i off as over precious parents. We have since had dd's ears tested in isolation from one another and a pressure test thing which shows quite clearly barely enough hearing for speech acquisition.

Hi My ds will be 27 mths next month and says mummy, yum yum for dummy, bye, ar for car and hiya...there is no way he will be saying more words in a mth, but yet i still cant get referred until his check and then he will be on a waiting list and not seen probably until he is nearly 3 - great confidence in my HA!!!

We do all the singing, games, repetition etc but he just isnt bothered, his understanding, his play and his ability to get his point across is superb, just cant speak, am slighly concerned but think he is just "slower!

Was going to suggest Babytalk- KTNoo has beaten me. How's his understanding? How does he communicate what he wants or is interested in (pointing?).

TheMNPeacekeepingforce - he wouldn't do it if he didn't enjoy it so I wouldn't worry. Have to get to a certain level of language development to do this (my dd3 is starting to know lines from songs now age 22 months - couldn;t have done that until now). They are memorising phrases when they do this - not a bad thing but not actually constructing sentences themselves which is what you are aiming at.

Choices are much more of a real life useful situation. No one expects you to fill in words for them in real life. Same goes for asking kids questions that you already know the answer to. My dd1 used to refuse to answer when my mum did that, e.g. "What's that?" (dd1 frowns at grandma as if to say "You know it's a dog".)

KTnoo - good point about it not being a real life situation but nor is singing nursery rhymes really. And I do think it has just helped his confidence a bit - that is definitely part of the issue with ds. He for example whispers some words to 'practice' them before he says them out loud which suggests to me he only wants to say something if he knows it's going to come out right.

ds1 (severely autistic) always enjoyed filling in the blanks with (his extremely unclear speech). Especially of this favourite book- hands hands fingers thumb which he could 'say' with intonation only.

We do a lot of that still - it's extreme in his case, but it does work as a method- so for example I'll say "ok ds1 this is the last time, what is it? the last....' and he'll say 'an' (time). I've noticed it draws his attention in and means that he processes what I'm saying better as well.

Thanks very much all of you for your advice so far.

mrspink27 - We did have his hearing checked, which was fine. But based on your experience (we also had the two health vistors but a hand held noise thingie) I guess it might be something we investigate further in the future.

Regarding the SALT, the confusing thing was that when DS1 was assessed she stated that he was generally normal i.e. social interaction, attention, understanding, etc; it was just that his speech development was delayed. However, when we received the one page assesment form in the post it painted a much more negative picture with mention of attention difficulties.

He does use "hello" and "bye-bye" although not necessarily in the correct context. If he wants certain things he knows the word for he will say the word: milk, water, Tiger (his cuddly toy). Otherwise he'll just whine and point. It's just that, to me, his vocabulary seems small and "conversations" will just consist of repeating the same words.

We do most of the things that you've all suggested - we'll just have to make sure we concentrate on them properly. Possibly the recent arrival of DS2 has taken our eye off the ball (amd maybe affected DS1?). I'm hoping that it's just a corner he's about to turn, but when you're in the middle of it it seems a very big and very long corner.