29month old girl / speech delay / nursery

[Ajb1006]

Hi. I’m just looking for some advice or if anyone has been through similar:

my 29month old daughter has been at nursery for 2 months (only attend 2 mornings twice a week) the teacher said during her review that she’s very behind in her speech, laughs at nothing, doesn’t eat / drink there or respond to name , plays a lot on her own and only interested in certain toys

at her 2 year check with HV, they referred her to early intervention speech therapy which we are still waiting for, she has excellent motor skills and does say around 25 words, at home she points to things she wants, repeats songs & dances to music, listens to her name, eats everything expect veg, is affectionate, isn’t shy, brings toys to play with me or others, very chatty with a lot of blabbing.

i have put her on a waiting list for private speech therapy.

am I overreacting in feeling she’s soo far behind? I feel the nursery teacher labelled her without labelling if that makes sense and I just feel like a crap mum now.

thank you x

My daughter restarted nursery after a 3 month gap at 3 exactly. At the time she had probably 20 words but most communicated by pointing. She had done well with language initially but at 18 months she dropped all but 3 words and only ever had 3 words if she learnt a new one she dropped an old one. She lost mummy and daddy too which was heart breaking
We had some support with our old HV but then moved. We had our 2 year assessment slightly late because of this and she had been at her new nursery 3 months and difference was huge she was using words to communicate need for the firs time. Our HV said our nursery was particularly good at putting things in the place to help development without being told to do so. It was left under review in case she has a regression again. This was a year ago now and she has gone from strength to strength.

A good supportive nursery can be so valuable

Sorry that should have said she restarted nursery at 2 exactly

That’s great to hear your little one got on well.

the review I had at the nursery actually made me feel worse tbh, she does a lot of things they claim she can’t / won’t, they have said they will do 1 2 1 with her which hopefully they will see she does!

how do you know if it’s the right nursery for them? (My first child so everything is new to me)

I think she is not settled in yet and is taking it all in, 2 half days a week will take time to feel comfortable. She is not crying just taking her time. Don't panic and just see how get gets on in a few weeks

That's really normal. When we worked with the HV the support worker did the assessment at home and wrote to the nursery to do the same assessment as it's quite normal for children to do less or more or different in different settings especially if one is a new place. We didn't get to compare home and nursery however as our nursery closed before they had chance to do the assessment.
I was in hospital with my daughter between 10 and 13 months home at weekends and she regressed so much on the ward.

For about a year after she learnt to walk whenever she was mad she only crawled!

I wonder if two mornings a week is not enough for her to get used to the nursery and settle there? She may need more time to come out of her shell, so to speak.

Ask the gp to be referred for a hearing test 😊 (I'm speaking from experience and personally think anyone referred for speech therapy should have a hearing test but that's a different story)

Thank you!
i do feel they don’t really know her yet, just wish when they did these reviews they also acknowledged that and were slightly more hopeful.

im not normally a worrier but it’s keeping me up at night!

This! The first thing our paediatrician said when we raised concerns about my daughter speech was let's arrange a hearing test.
She had already had one at 7 months though due to development delays when she was 4 months.

That’s definitely something I will do, she will respond to her name but sometimes it takes a few tries so I had wondered wether it is her hearing

I had thought this, I accept what they said in the review but feel they definitely don’t know her well enough yet, she settles fine and says bye to me when I leave her but they’ve mentioned she does tend to play on her own a lot (again she’s an only child so she’s quite good at playing on her own or with adults)