Speech delay or autism

[Boymummytimestwo]

looking for a bit of advice really of others experiences. My DS is 25 months, can say lots of individual words - milk, mummy, daddy, car, crocodile etc and has on occasion stringed a few words together ‘mummy upstairs’ or ‘bye bye gruffalo’

My concern isn’t that he doesn’t speak, it’s more that he doesn’t use words as often as I remember his older brother speaking at this age. He has a good understanding of thing although sometimes won’t follow very specific instructions e.g throw the ball in the hoop was challenging the other day but he will put toys away, go get shoes etc if I ask. He responds to his name but sometimes does seem a bit away with the fairies. A few times a day he will point and tell me something e.g bird when he saw a bird outside the window. He doesn’t always look to me to see that I’ve seen what he’s looking at too.

He is generally very easy going, happy to go with the flow. He doesn’t yet appear to be using language to communicate with us and he’s not really trying to communicate his wants/needs outside of wanting food or a particular toy etc. He plays with toys well and is generally happy to be around other children.

All the material I’ve found online appears to suggest speech delay equals autism which I know isn’t true so I’m just looking for experiences of anyone whose child had a speech delay but does not have asd. I have no issue if he does turn out to have asd but I feel a lot of assumptions are being made about him by extended family and I don’t feel I have enough knowledge yet. Thanks for any advice you can give.

My daughter had 3 words at 10 months and at 20 months she still had 3 words but different words as she learnt a word she lost a word. We had an assessment via the HV and she did ok on the 12-18 month questionnaire and got 0 points for the 18-24 months which put her slightly behind and the only real concern was the fact she wasn't retaining words.
We were given some sheets with advice for bringing on her language. Lots of conversation with her mostly. Then her nursery closed with 20 minutes notice and we moved house so she was without regular nursery care for 13 weeks. She built up her vocabulary to about 10 words but mostly communicated by pointing when she started nursery again at 24 months. By 26 months she was communicating with 3 and 4 words sentences and rarely by pointing.
She is August born and at 20 months we were expecting to have to defer her entry to school but we now have no concerns and she will be starting school in September aged 4 and a few weeks

Has he had a hearing check?

Thanks @Superscientist , this is reassuring, he has been in regular nursery care (2 days a week) since he was 13 months old. Nursery unhelpfully told me they don’t spend enough time with him to give an on the spot assessment but will be observing him more closely now that I’ve requested it

@InTheRainOnATrain thanks for your response. he has had the GP look in his ear and said all looks fine, but he is seeing an audiologist on Monday. I think he can hear ok though, he will respond to instructions even when I whisper them but DH had glue ear as a child & grommets

I should have also said he loves playing peekaboo, chasing round the garden and mimics everything we do at the moment. If engaged with me, he will immediately repeat the words back that I say to him (although someone else said this could be ASD related) and copies my actions.

I think you are worrying unnecessarily and possibly have high expectations of a just turned two year old! Mine has just turned two and a half and was similar at your sons age but with less words and understanding. He’s come on so much in the past few months but only just starting to string words together and following more complex instructions but “throw the ball in the hoop” is pretty hard. I’m not sure mine would understand the language on its own without being shown the actions.

Like you, I had concerns of autism but I’ve raised it with ever single professional I have been able to see or speak to (preschool/private SALT/portage/HV) and they all agree he is speech delayed but don’t think it is due to being autistic. Whether or not this is true is another matter but they have no major concerns at this stage.

It’s difficult when comparing your child against one who hit all those milestones. My niece at 2.5 was chatting away in full complex sentences and my DS feels a million miles away from doing that but every day progress is being made.

@Nosleepforthismum thank you that’s so reassuring, I often wonder if we are expecting too much. I had hoped nursery would be able to explain exactly what he should be capable of at this age but so far they haven’t been very helpful.

Im glad to hear your DS has continued to gain more speech skills over the past few months. Do you mind me asking what is it that made you concerned about autism? Was it just the speech or other behaviour?
Also was there anything in particular the specialists suggest you do that has had a noticeable impact? We read a lot, talk to him about everything, play with the toys he’s interested in and make comments etc. for the past few weeks he has been copying everything I say straight after I say it so I am hopefully he will begin speaking more soon.

ps. I have a similar situation here too, niece is a couple of months older than DS and opened the door to her own second birthday party saying ‘welcome to my party I’m 2’. She can also name all colours and count very well. It’s so difficult when they are compared to their cousins and wider family start making comments.

It took my daughter until about 2y6-9m to catch up with her peers. Now she's is pretty close to them. There is one of my friends who's son is usually ahead of his age and she's never too far behind him now.

We had her hearing tested at 7 months as she was behind at 4 months and didn't respond to sounds or voice until 19 weeks and also didn't smile until 19 weeks. This was due to uncontrolled reflux and allergies. Literally 1 week after removing dairy and soya and starting high dose omperazole she went from quite far behind expectations to doing lots of stuff she had never done before. After 3 weeks she was perfectly average for her age. She was just so distraught that she had not time to engage with the world.

There are hundreds of reasons that progress isn't linear or to the textbook. You have to take in the bigger picture. If you just looked at delays with smiling and turning to voices with regression with speech only communicating with pointing my daughter would tick loads of autism boxes but in the flesh with the big picture it is absolutely not even brought up with professionals!

I think he might be perfectly normal rather than autistic or have a speech delay.

@Nosleepforthismum just checking in to see how your son is doing?

My DS is now 25 months and has begun putting words together. I now get ‘that’s mine’ or ‘I did it’ quite often. Still very quiet and often needs to be told to say ‘hello’ or ‘bye’ rather than just waving but he continues to progress. He has also been diagnosed with glue ear although the hearing test was inconclusive as to whether the glue ear is affecting his hearing.

I still have concerns about him, he doesn’t seem to want to speak and is much happier communicating non-verbally. He will engage with us, has good eye contact etc but often it is because we have engaged first rather than him starting it. He does a lot of pretend play and being ‘cheeky’. His favourite thing to do at the moment is pretend to feed me then quickly put it into his own mouth and laugh.