Speech delay - feeling like my son will never catch up 😞

[Sunshine1996]

My son turned 2 in April, he hasn’t had the easiest start as from age 1 he started getting ear infections every 3 weeks. He was diagnosed with glue ear which caused him to have hearing loss. We finally had his grommet surgery just over a week ago. I’ve heard lots of people say it worked almost instantly and their child’s speech came on straight away after the op. He babbles constantly and always has done, and before the op he had around 10-15 words which include animal noises. But since we have heard nothing new. I have tried flashcards with him again but still nothing. We always read, sing.. I just feel like I’m failing him 😞 he has brilliant motor skills and he is very social, so not worried in that aspect. We are still on the waiting list for speech therapy, but does anyone have any advice on how I could help him in the mean time? His first word was mum, but I haven’t heard him say it since the ear infections and I just can’t wait for the day he can even say that again 😞

Morning, just wanted to tell you that my son said nothing recognisable until 3. He's 6 now and doesn't stop talking. He had very sticky ears but hospital weren't concerned. Speech and language was dreadful in our area.
I use to give a running commentary of everything I was doing, simple one words to him such as cup, extended to blue cup. It was lots of modelling.
Now he's at school, he still gets help with speech and language as they pay for a therapist to come in but you'd never know now. I understand your worries, I felt exactly the same.
Will he be at nursery? That would help him being around others.

My ds was like tinsels

He barely said 2 words and nothing that was conversational.

Then one day he just realised he could say a whole sentence.

He hasn't shut up since 😂

Thank you so much for both your replies that’s made me feel much more hopeful. It’s so good to know that one day hopefully a switch will click and he will understand. Unfortunately my older daughter who is 3.5 has started copying some of his baby talk as he communicates through babble majority of the day

My DD had grommets had 7, she had no ear infections but had worsening hearing loss due to glue ear. The difference in her hearing was immediate.

Are you able to afford some private SALT sessions? Or even look up advice online. I suspect flash cards aren’t part of their standard advice but I could be wrong.

So he has had very poor hearing since a year old. Think logically his speech learning is that of a one year old! Hearing to speech is very complex and now as a toddler he's so busy running and playing and less time to focus on learning to speak as his brain finally gets to hear.

He will catch up!

You probably have lots of techniques to have managed his communication so far just carry on. Lots of baby signing with speech from you.

My son's speech was exactly the same as your son's when he was 2 (and he didn't have any issues with his hearing). He gradually started catching up and by the time he was 4 he was speaking in line with his peers. He didn't have that explosion that some people talk about but there was a huge change over time.

My friend's son was very similar to yours. Now he's high flying in the finance world!

Please don’t stress about this, just talk to him and narrate what’s happening. His words will come

I just wanted to share my son. He had a speech delay at 2 he had around 30 words and he didn’t have any of the issues your son has had to contend with like ear infections etc.

The words he could say weren’t always clear like “dinodor”

I made sure I was modelling language back to him really well and constantly repeating things back correctly that I thought he’d said.

I swear in the back of the car on the way back from nursery one day he just launched into a full blown conversation and by the time he finished preschool his vocabulary was described as “sophisticated”.

Hang in there OP he’s only just got his ears sorted. It will take sometime.

My daughter had problems retaining language. At 10 months she and 3 words and she still only had 3 words at 20 months but different words. At 24months she had 10-15 words and communicated with pointing. She's August born and we were fairly certain she wouldn't be ready to start school at 4 and would need a deferral. At 26 months her language came on all of a sudden. She turned 4 this week. Doesn't stop talking and is starting school next month with absolutely no concerns about her language.

She had delays with hearing as a newborn too. At 17 weeks scored very poorly on her development assessment as she didn't respond or turn to sounds or voices she also didn't smile. A week on high dose reflux treatment and me going dairy and soya free meant she started to respond to voices and smile. It probably took 2-3 weeks to turn to noises and by 4-5 weeks she was perfectly average in the 5 month development assessment.

If it has only been a week since the surgery I would give it another week or two and then it wouldn't hurt to have a chat with the HV to see where they are for their age and if there are any exercises they can give you to help. We had a session at 20 months with a member of the HV team who could assess language and she gave us some advice on how to try to keep words in my daughters working vocab. Losing words was a bigger concern than her not having words in the first place

I've worked with a child who didn't say a word until age 5 and at age 10-13 is a massive chatterbox. He struggles with some pronunciation but nothing major (told once me his dad thought wolves were 's**t', meant cheat, made me laugh 😆).

Yes definitely put the flashcards away. As a speech and language therapist, I have literally never used them. You want a child to be able to use language functionally, not just be able to name a picture. I'd recommend the book 'it takes two to talk' which is a hanen book or you could take a course on this approach.