When should you start to be concerned about indistinct speech in a toddler?

[Pruni]

DS is two and a half, and he's talking a lot. However, much of it is pretty indistinct. I can make out most of his meaning, but others can't, including his father. I only realise this when I have to translate for him to family members and I genuinely have no idea what's normal. His peers all seem to be way ahead but they are girls and I'm not worried about the stage he's at, just the slurriness of it.

Phoneme-wise, he is fine, and his grammar is coming on in leaps and bounds (spot the linguistics graduate) but it's such a mish-mash most of the time.

mizmiz - sorry I meant off topic talking about my autistic son here rather than just an NT child. Although having said that I know some children can make up their own rules - I am a twin and we did have a bit of our own language. It just wasn't as complex and bizairre as my son's.

I'd love to train but am 40 and having done college, uni, then postgrad I feel I am all studied out! It is a fascinating topic though.

As I said earlier my 4 year old dd was also slow to talk and hardly spoke at all at age 2. Our health visitor said wait 6 months and sure enough she advanced a lot by 2 1/2 (still behind though) so Mrs M don;t worry - they change a lot at this time. Also check out her body language - does she give you things, does she appear to understand what you say?

My dd was very advanced physically with climbing, jumping etc and often that stage can come beforehand and the brain can only cope with one thing at a time, so speech/language may come a bit later.

Hope this makes sense - trying to do breakfasts just now.

MrsM I wouldn't worry just yet especially if you just introduced a second language :) as I said earlier dd was very late to speak in any way intelligibly and made up her own words (spiders for ages were saba - no idea where she got that one from!).

DS is 20 months and doesn't say much, but he points, grunts, drags me along and winges with rather annoyed tones because mama can't decipher what he wants ;) Physically he is very advanced, started walking at 10 months (dd was 15 months), leaps about on the trampoline etc. If he still lags once he goes to nursery then I'll worry :)

My DS had trouble speaking until he was about 4 and now we can't shut him up and he speaks perfectly. He had glue ear which delayed his speech which we didn't know until he was about 4 and a half. I would get them checked at about 3 and a half because sounds will make it easier for them to learn to read when they start school and this held my ds back a little bit.

ds1 and ds2 both have had probs with speech and both have needed speech therapy. With ds1 we didnt bother getting it checked cos didnt have many to compare him with and it wasnt til he was at his pre-school final term before reception (4.5yo) that we were advised to do something about it. ds2 was picked up much earlier as he had obvious hearing loss from a glue ear picked up at 3yrs and he's since had grommets and adenoid removal. At just 4yrs now he's still having sptherapy as he's missing some sounds... most obviuosly "l", "s", "f" . I'm convinced that ds would have benefitted with earlier intervention and if your local SPtherapy is as overstretched as ours is on the NHS you could wait for up to 2yrs for an appt. We ended up having to go privately as ds1 was getting teased at school.
My advise would be to raise your concerns earlier rather than late just in case.

If you're even slightly worried about your sons speech go to your HV or GP and get an appointment with a speech therapist.2 of my 5 boys were late/indistinct speakers.With the DS2 left it too late, (was fobbed off by HV 'well boys do talk later ,or the older 2 are talking for him')! He really struggled at infant school and took years to catch up with reading.Still need extra help at secondary school.With DS3 I noticed similar problems at 2.5 and insisted on a referal to S.T. Got 1st appointment 12 months later and by the time DS3 started in reception class his speech was fine and no problems with readig or communicating with other children.

My daughter is 3 and half and she has a stutter. At forst it wasnt so bad and was only now and again when excited or something and tried getting her view across too quickly but now it is most of the time and very frustrating for her. Is this something i should worry about now or wait to see if she grows out of it. I dont want to leave it too long if its going to be with her permantely. Any advise mums?

Thanks

My ds1 had an extreme stutter, for just a few weeks, then it just went away by itself. We didn't make a big thing of it, which probably helped.

Yeh when it first happened we ignored it but she has had it for a good few months now and isnt improving. From looking at other websites i think i will contact my gp. thanks for advise tho.

Have found this thread V late on but would like you to know that you can refer to speech therapy yourself by phoning your local speech therapy dept, you do not have to go thru' GP or health visitor. If you don't know whether they really need seeing or not you can always phone the speech therapist & have a chat,they won't mind (honest!)

I too have found this thread late on, just wanted to share about my ds1 who sounds quite similar.

His vocab was great, long sentences etc, but people really struggled to understand him. He investigated for glue ear, without having had any major ear infections, so that's always worth a go. That turned out okay, what they did notice was that he had a lot of wax in his ear. We had to squirt olive oil into his ears and that loosened it and then we used another substance (name escapes me) to break it down. i expect you can get it at a chemist. i
It might be worth a go, as it is painless and relatively cheap way of making sure he has optimum hearing while waiting to see any other professional if that is what you decide to do.

He is nearly three and a half now, and he is fine

reading this thread this morning when i was feeling very confused about ds's (2) speech has given me a lot of reassurance

how is speech delay diagnosed?(if anyone knows?) how can a GP/HV tell if a child is just a 'late talker' and not have anything else further wrong?

GPs and HVs can't really Lunavix.
A SALT needs to do that.

thanks moondog.. i guess i dont know if i should wait some or contact one...

Message withdrawn

They're amazing aren't they???