Unsure to speech refer 3 year old, help pls!!

[mummyandmex]

Hi mums, anyone on here had a little one been referred to speech/language therapy. Long story short, daughter , started nursery 4 days ago, 4 hours each day and nursery pulled me aside today to ask if they could refer her to speech therapy?
She turned 3 last week. Says all sorts of words, reads words perfect from books including all animals you could think of, all colours, “shoes, hello, thank you, excuse me, socks, dress” every colour, says and reads the whole alphabet. Isn’t forming full sentences in terms of “I had fun at the park today” but will say “juice please” “go in the car” “go to park” “dog says woof” “potty for pee pee” etc. i thought she was doing amazingly with her talking and reading so I was a little shocked.
is this behind for a 3 year old? Taking into consideration she doesn’t know a lot of kids her age so that’s why I thought nursery will make her more confident in social situations. She’s also strong willed and got the “I’m not a performing monkey” attitude, she’ll do it when she wants to or feels like it haha. Surely they’re jumping to conclusions too quick after only seeing her for four days. She’s rather quiet till she’s comfortable. Being round the other kids I thought would make her more confident and copying etc? It’s had me a little taken back because I don’t want to agree to the referral and force it on her if she’s actually doing well for her age and they just haven’t seen that there yet?
pls, experiences and opinions here welcome , I’m real confused.

I don’t have exact experience with this, but my daughter was slightly delayed with her speech when she was approx 18/20 months - it was also picked up by nursery. We didn’t get to the point of SLT referral because a couple weeks later she moved up to the toddler room and suddenly had a ‘speech explosion’ and just caught up really quickly. I think this was due to being around older kids and picking it up from them. So possibly you’ll find that things will improve just by her being around other kids in nursery.

@K122 thank you for responding, that’s reassuring to hear. My main issue with her not having siblings cousins etc was the reason I was excited for her to attend nursery, more kids to copy and experience with, then I’ll reckon she’ll spring out all sorts of chats with me, I was just shocked as I was fair proud of how good a yap she is. Thank you, that’s made me feel a lot better , hopefully we are both right and nursery and the other toddlers will bring her on with it! Appreciate it mama thank you! Xx

You could try this progress checker:
https://progress-checker.speechandlanguage.org.uk/

Also, depending on where you are, your local family hub may run drop-in sessions with their speech and language therapy team where you could talk to someone and get more information.

I think I'd ask for a meeting with her keyworker to discuss further how she's speaking at nursery and how she's speaking at home.

To me, her speech sounds a little behind – most of your examples are phrases, rather than sentences ('go to park' rather 'I go park' or 'me go park') and a number of them sound like common phrases she might have memorised as a whole. At just turned three, I'd expect quite a wide range of 3-5 word sentences (with lots of grammatical mistakes!).

When you say she reads words out of books, what exactly do you mean? If you wrote a simple word on a piece of paper, no other clues, she could read it?

If nursery still think a referral is merited after discussing it, I'd be inclined to accept it because waiting lists are long. It's very easy to take her off the list later if it becomes clear it's not needed, but if 6 months or a year down the line, it becomes clear she does need a bit of help, much better to already be on the list.

@skkyelarkhey thank you for that, I totally get what your saying it is more phrases than there is grammar! As for reading, yeah somehow she can read like a 5 year old. Her main thing is she likes me writing words she can read on her chalkboard, with no help or me sounding out she’ll automatically say loads of words , I’ve a video but I don’t know how to upload it. Write ever animal and she can say, every colour, “Christmas” thank you , goodbye , your welcome! All clear as day without any clues. It has me in shock how good! It’s when she’s most talkative!
i agree sentence wise she is a little behind, i noticed that myself and why i signed ger up for nursery, i take her loads places to socialise but places you take kids they’re usually hyped running around rather than interacting. I spoke with the nursery manager again today and she said she’s actually not too concerned now so to speak as she sat doing words with her on the white board and all the girls were astounded, said she follows all instruction and does say things just not always too clear. Agrees we should give her time to settle and let her experience being round the other kids for a bit. So looking back to doing it in a month in not much progress, but I agree with you, I’m completely happy to do it, it can’t do any harm, I think she needs the chance to settle and learn a little from the other kids first. She is a little shy with new people for a bit! Thank you tho, the phrases/ sentences statement I hadn’t even considered, thank you! definitely going to give it a go when the time comes , can only do good I guess!

Revisiting in a month sounds like a very sensible plan, and it sounds like you have a proactive, alert nursery, which is great.

Clearly a clever little one with her reading! It's obviously unusual to be reading like that at just turned three, and coupled with her speech, it might be worth doing a bit of reading about hyperlexia.

With speech, I think it's often advised to essentially model the next step for them. So if she says 'go to park', you might say 'let's go to park'; 'potty for pee-pee', 'you need potty for pee-pee', and so on. It might help to simplify your own speech some as well. Even if she understands 'Come on, darling, let's go in the hall and put our shoes on', she might find it easier to see how she can 'build' sentences if she hears more 'let's put shoes on'.

@skkyelark yeah her reading has us all in amazement but I’ve sat and read to her since she was really young, my voice I think helped her sleep and still does, pointing to the words as saying them etc is something we do a lot of! She enjoys it so we do it a lot, she’s really ahead with her reading , it could be one of the factors she’s not focussing on sentences as much as she prefers reading what’s in front of her than actually saying them in daily life. She has just turned 3 and not long started, I’m happy they brought it up and will deffo look into it again soon, I appreciate their opinions even if it is a little too soon to say. Yeah that’s a good point, I will definitely try and simple my sentences and try do the next steps you suggested! Thank you, your advice has been valued here ❤️

Her reading sounds amazing! Must be a bit gifted in that area. My little one was diagnosed as slightly speech delayed at 26 months but after some assessments the nursery said they are happy, she's just down the bottom range of 'normal' so to speak and progressing all the time. She will be 3 in 4 months and she is probably approaching speaking like yours does. But without the reading! Nursery said provided she kept progressing then no need for a referral. Sometimes the formal setting for assessments or the specific things they ask them to do don't resonate with the child - for example, ours likes teddies and miniature figures but not dollies so when they asked her to brush dollies hair she brushed her own hair, she brushes her teddies hair though which is a decent equivalent. And they showed her a picture of two kids, one on a trampoline and the other stood next to it crying, and they asked her which child was crying, but we have a trampoline so she got excited and just shouted ITS A BOING BOING etc. Once they spoke to me to fill in some gaps about her capabilities they were happier about it all. The tick boxes are a bit of a nightmare really although I realise they can help identify when help is truly needed.

I can’t ASD a lot to the thread as you’ve received some excellent advice already. I would second doing the progress checker from Speech & Language UK as it’s very easy to see from that if she may need some support, or not, with her speech.

I also think that revisiting her progress in a month is sensible.

Also wanted to say that SaLT is nothing to fear. The sessions are usually fun for the DC, the SaLT will play games with them and go activities. Your DD will probably enjoy going. My DC2 had SaLT avd was a bit upset when the sessions came to an end as they’d enjoyed going each week.