Glue ear / late talker? Any advice please!

[KC1234]

Hi all,

any experience with glue ear?

my little girl is 19 months, she was born with a heart defect, and underwent surgery and was then very poorly as a newborn. Despite all of this, she was always the happiest baby!

for the last month or 2, she’s just become much more ‘whingey’ she is still very happy for some of the day. But she also spends a lot of the day whinging - it’s not always a proper cry. She just wants to be held or carried, doesn’t want whatever I try to give her to entertain her etc. I just feel drained by the end of the day and like I need to have a good cry

she had a bad ear infection in October, and last week I took her back to GP as I was worried she had another (she was up all night crying and I could tell she had pain) GP said it’s not infected but she has ‘glue ear’ advised me to bring her back in a couple of weeks to review it and if it’s ongoing then they’d refer to ENT after 3 months.

i then had a call from nursery to say she was biting others which is unlike her - I had a long discussion with her key worker and I said could she be frustrated? I feel she understands so much now but she only has about 4/5 words she uses at home, and at nursery she doesn’t use any recognisable words, she only babbles. Key worker said she would expect more words by now but said it’s too early for any intervention.

my questions are - could the glue ear be causing the irritability? And should I be concerned about her speech? I’ve read online that glue ear can delay speech but I really don’t think she has any hearing loss.

any experience/reassurance would be greatly appreciated.
thanks in advance x

Hi, paeds SLT here. Glue ear can absolutely cause delayed speech, a good proportion of my pre school caseload have glue ear. Listen to some videos online of how speech sounds to a child with glue ear. Often these kids can hear enough to respond to their name etc but it can still impact language acquisition and speech sound development. Glue ear itself is unlikely to cause irritability but frustration at being unable to express herself verbally might be the issue there. Poor little one. Def follow up and take the ENT referal if needed. Push GP for audiology too and read up on parent child interaction strategies to support with communication development

thanks So much for this. Really useful!
I will definitely follow up with GP
Would 19 months be too early to be seen by SLT? Understand I probably wouldn’t get an NHS referral but willing to pay privately if it would be beneficial to her x

I tend to see from 2+. The NHS service is almost non existent right now, private therapists are all running wait lists. I’d call around now and put her name on some lists ready for a few months time and you can always not go ahead if things improve.