Speech delay and behavioural issues.

[Writerwannabe83]

I'm posting here on behalf of a friend who is concerned about her daughter's speech.

Her daughter is 21 months and only says two words: momma and nannad (her version of grandad). Her first word was cat when she was about 15 months old but she hasn't said it for months and months now.

My friend talks a lot to her daughter to try and encourage speech but nothing seems to be improving the situation.

Her daughter grunts a lot however. For example, when she wants something she just points to it and makes a loud grunting noise. My friend has a "Baby's First Words" book with lots of pictures in it which her daughter enjoys looking at, but again she will forcefully point at a picture and grunt and my friend will then tell her what the picture is of.

My friend and her DD came to visit me recently and in the 2.5 hours they were here she didn't make a single noise except the grunts.

She is also displaying lots of behavioural issues, hitting, smacking, biting, pinching and pulling people's hair. My friend is really struggling with the behaviour and is going to speak to her HV team for advice but I do wonder if the behavioural problems are due to her daughter not being able to speak and getting frustrated. My friend doesn't think the HV team will be concerned about the limited speech though as he's not yet two years old.

I don't know if it's relevant but my friend also has another DD aged 8 whose speech is absolutely fine.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation or can offer any advice?

Tell her to get her hearing checked my ds had glue ear which meant his speech was very delayed it was explained to me that his hearing was like listening underwater so he never heard anything properly to re pronounce it. He was referred to speech therapy at 2 and stayed under them til around 5. He had grommets put in at 4 after that his speech development improved loads. When he was 1st referred they taught him a type of sign language (think it's called macaton or something like that ). Her behaviour could be a way of venting frustration from not being able to communicate properly.

I have a current thread about what we're doing right now with DS1, speech delay and behaviour.

Just wanted to say that it's not too early and fellow MNers were quick to point out to get in asap as sometimes there are long waits, procedures etc when I first posted for advice. I spoke to Family Practitioner (linked with HVs) around 20mo, first SLT assessment at 22mo, started group speech therapy at 25mo, thread will show you where we're at now at 28mo.

DS did also do things like hit, pinch, mainly when upset because he couldn't get what he wanted. That hasn't lasted for us however, we had a strict 'no' response, holding him still when he did it for about 10 seconds and repeating no, on the odd occasion he persisted we had time out (maybe twice), hardly ever does it now, can't remember last time, but that approach has always worked for DS to teach him no/danger so I don't know if it would work for work your friend's DC.