Is my son being held back at nursery

[sleepyhorse]

My son went back to nursey today, it's his second term and he is continuing to do 2 afternoons. He is 2.7 years old. I was surprised to see that there is now only 4 children in this group when there were about 12 last term. It seems a lot of them have been moved up to 3 sessions where they now do mornings which i think is more structured and less relaxed than the afternoons. My ds doesn't talk yet and the teacher said she didn't think he was ready to move up just yet which is fair enough. But just wondering if only having 3 other little children to play with is going to delay his interaction and language development even more. Would he not benefit more being in the bigger group or will it be better for him in the smaller group as presumably he will get more attention from the teachers? I'm just desperate for him to talk soon. Opinions please!

Oh yes, it will definitely scupper his university applications.

Just relax. He doesn't even need to be at nursery.

You have my sympathy. We changed my son's nursery because they wanted to keep my son in the baby room because he could not walk at the age of two. The community paediatrian even intervened and told the nursery that my son had a mental age of two.

Have you sort professional help about your son's speech. Is his speech definately delayed? It may well be worth him having a hearing test.

He does need to be with his peers for emotional development.

I think that lareggub misses the point.

I know what you are saying but My son is nearly 3 and still doesn't talk so obviously as a mother it's a bit worrying

sleepyhorse you need to ask yourr GP/ health visitor for referal to an audiologist and a speech and language theraphist assessment.

You have every reason to be worried.

Yes he has got a hearing test next week and I took him to see a language and speech therapist, he will start official sessions in march. I'm so so worried about him.

I'm so sorry I was flippant. I didn't see the bit about his speech. I hope it goes well with the sessions.

I suppose it depends whether more interraction with adults or more interraction with children will be more likely to help him with his speech. It sounds as though his nursery think the former.

Been feeling guilty for not doing something about it earlier but I guess I was quite relaxed about it as people getting saying telling me not to worry as kids develop at different stages. Does anyone know if its supposed to make a big difference seeing a language and speech therapist? Once I have ruled out if he has a hearing impairment will the L&S therapists be able to help him?

sleepyhorse. my son's development was very delayed at two years old. he had severe glue ear and orthopedic problems. He had a lot of help and now in year 4 he is on the top table for everything.

Hey sleepyhorse, does your DS say nothing at all or is he just behind on his speech development? My DS 2.10yrs 'barely' spoke until about 3m ago when all of a sudden the vocab has just built and built where now he is putting loose sentences together.

Just thought I would share, some of them are just later developers.

Re; playschool, I quite like my son being in a smaller group because of the closer adult attention which - at this age - is really good esp as the children don't really play 'together' so much. But just MO!

Could it be to do with age? In a toddler room there has to be 1 adult: 4 children, but in a pre-school room (age 3 and over) the ratio is 1:8.

My child couldn't really talk until she started school.

Another avenue I wish I'd gone down would be to contact Portage as they will come down to your house and do structured play sessions. You'd need to contact your LEA to see where your portage people are based though.

You're very lucky to be getting speech and language therapy sessions. Manchester don't do them at all (we only had them in the end because we transferred to Bury). Children of 2 don't really play together much anyway and there's plenty of time for them to play when they go to school so I would say that everything that is possible is being done.

Cookieraymond - he says car, nemo and juice. That's it , so not even mummy and daddy. Hopefully he is just a late developer like your son.

((((sleepyhorse))))

Please don't get disheartened. Children can catch up on speech especially if there is a physical problem like glue ear.

Does your son have an IEP? Does your area have child development centres. They are great at coordinating different agencies.

Sleepyhorse - does he understand what you are saying? At 2, a child should actually be understanding 2 words in every sentence.

Re: speech
Basically the guidelines are 6-20 recognisable words at 18 months and 50 words at 2 years. From that they go on to putting together short 2 and 3 word phrases.

My child had a similar vocabulary at 21 months: choo choo train and another couple of words - definitely no mummy!

Our local area refused to even see children under 2.

I would ask for a Derbyshire language assessment to see if your son is understanding language at all (my child couldn't understand a thing at that time so she got referred to a community paediatrician.

Sometimes, delays are just common because of the differences in the way children develop (often used as an excuse not to do anything! but it is true - some children just are late developers) and sometimes there may be an underlying problem. However, they won't even bother to investigate that until your child is actually in school.

All I can say to do is to alert the appropriate professionals when they don't meet their milestones, otherwise it's an even harder fight to get resources if you factor things like waiting lists into consideration.

It's good that you are in the system for assessment and hopefully you will get some advice about what is causing the speech delay. I agree it's very frustrating when well meaning people brush aside developmental milestones as if they did not exist for a reason. This is easy for them to do when their children are demolishing milestones as fast as they come - most children will as the milestones seem (to me) to be at the lower end of normal development. My pet hate now is someone saying ' My dc can do so much more than the guidelines blah blah blah' They don't realise that this is not advanced just that they are normal. Good luck with the assessments and hopefully more language will come in time.