Speech Therapy for my 2 year old

[icandi]

I was wondering wether to ask for a referral to speech therapy as my 2 year old (he was 2 6 weeks ago) still can't say any words clearly at all. He says 'Ma' and 'Da' and several other words but the others are not intelligible to anyone else but us. His hearing is fine and he understands everything you say to him. I'm going to speak to Hv on monday but until then... any experiences or advice? Anyone had speech therapy for their lo?

DS was referred to a speech therapist shortly after his second birthday. He was saying a few words, but NOWEHERE near the average 200 I was told he should have.
The speech therapist ruled out any physical reason for his delayed speech, and for the past six weeks he's been going to an early language group, which was great.
He's come on leaps and bound since 9he's three in May), although I'm not entirely sure it was down to the group - maybe he was just biding his time. BUT.. it reassured me that he wasn't the only one, and it wasn;t anything we were doing wrong.
If you're worried, it's probably best to do something, even if it's just to put your mind at rest

You can self-refer to speech therapy if you get no joy from your HV, just pop in to the Health Centre and ask for the address to write to requesting an appointment.
It is usual to have some speech sound errors and some children are just late to talk, a speech therapist will be able to look for problems at that age and give you advice on how to help at home.
How do you know his hearing is fine. The newborn hearing screen only tests the inner ear, the middle ear (where things like glue ear develop) can only be tested by an audiologist when the child is old enough to respond 'yes i heard the sound' etc. A referral to audiology might be worth asking for too, any SaLT worth her money would request you routinely saw an audiologist prior to seeing him/her. There is loads of information about fluctuating glue ear on the internet - please don't worry about it, I'm only mentioning it because it is good practice to check hearing when you are concerned about speech sound development.
Good Luck x

Hi and thank you. I don't know for sure that his hearing is perfectly ok but i am assuming it is because he hears birds singing outside and if i speak to him from the next room he hears me/brings me something that i have asked for for example. I will ask for it to be checked though.

If i self refer does that mean I am then going private/paying for the therapy?

No, if you self-refer to an NHS service it's still provided under the NHS.

Hi, My DS2 is fairly similar to yours. He was 2 about 2 months ago. We get 'mama', 'dada', 'baby', 'no' and a few other sounds but not real words. For example he can say 'ka' but you'd have to know the context to know whether he was trying to say car or cat or catch or something else!

Anyway in the last couple of weeks we had his hearing checked and it's fine, and then we went to a drop-in SALT clinic where they checked him out, and the upshot was that he's fine and doesn't 'qualify' for speech therapy - he will develop in his own time. They didn't mention anything about self-referring and gave me the impression that if I wanted speech therapy for him I would have to go private. At age 2, I think late speech on its own doesn't cause any alarm - they are really looking for late speech plus other developmental problems. They said to come back in 6 months if he hasn't made progress... but my feeling is that he will be catching up fast by then.

Hope that helps?

My DS is 2 and a half and has no words. It was only after really pushing for a slt referral with the GP that he was referred for a hearing test and he had glue ear. We always thought that he was fine as he could understand us and we thought he could hear most things. He could, but not with great clarity which has meant that he has poor listening skills. I would get a hearing test done just so that you know and hopefully it will be clear. If it's not, then he may need to have grommets which DS had a couple of months ago and his hearing is so much better (even though we didn't think it was bad IYSWIM).

Anyway, after seeing a SLT he has a diagnosis of verbal dyspraxia so his brain isn't getting the right messages to his mouth so his words aren't clear, but he's having therapy so we're seeing improvements. So with him, it's been a combination of hearing and this condition preventing him from developing his speech. Anyway, I just wanted to say that if you feel that something is wrong, then trust your instincts and see if you can arrange some therapy for him.

My son is now 4 years old and has normal speech for his age. When my son was 2 and a half he could only say: ba, da or ma.

How did he learn how to speak?

It was a extremely slow progress and we put a hell of a lot of work in to getting him to LEARN how to talk. Most children don't have to LEARN how to talk, they just talk without any effort. Its certainly no ones fault that our children can't talk. Its not our fault as parents and its not our children's fault. it can usually be traced back to genetics, but there is not much we can do about that! So the most important thing to do is accept it and have lots of fun with our children. Leo and I used to sing our sounds as we jumped up and down on the trampoline, it made it feel a little less like hard work.
I think sometimes the hardest thing about being a parent with a child with speech disorders is being judged by others, but I think that says more about the person judging then us as parents. Good luck everyone.