2.5 year old speech delay and anxiety

[Jendrw5]

Sorry in advance for the long post, but im wondering if anyone else is or has been in the same boat.

My son is 2.5 years old, he only has about 25 words and 20 signs. I've noticed his speech seems far behind other children his age, and always has been.

He also has very bad anxiety around other young chikdren and babies, he'll run away from them if they're near him in a park or softplay. If we're at a playgroup which we go to once a week, he'll sit on my lap the whole time, he won't say or do anything, and he often goes stiff with fear if there's more than about 5 other children there as well.

He's always been shy with adults too but he seems terrified of children, even his cousins who are 2 and 4, they came to play at our house the other day and he wouldn't move off my lap while they happily played.

The health visitor has referred him for a health check which she said also tests for autism, he's also getting referred to audiology for a hearing test, he has excellent understanding and can point most things out in books, so I know he knows what things are, he just can't say them.

I'm worried he may never get better with his speech especially if it's an anxiety related thing, he starts nursery next August and I was really hoping he'd have better speech by then otherwise I'm worried he'll just be sad and lonely the whole time he's there.

My boy was similar. Only we could understand him and I dreaded taking him anywhere for fear of him sitting on my knee the whole time or kicking off.

We sent him to a child minder at about 2.5 year old. Started out with just 1 day a week. It's a smaller setting, more homely and she can cuddle him when he needs it. And 6 months later he's a totally different child. He says some hilarious things and is so much more confident! It's difficult at first but was a total game changer in our circumstances and he loves going now. We've also introduced him to a nursery setting for part of the week, and he's settled in amazingly well, so now he splits his week between the two.

Thank you for your reply. We have been leaving him with my mum more and he loves it there. Hopefully when he starts nursery next year that'll give him more confidence too.

Not my area of expertise as DD is a bit younger but could you increase the amount of toddler sessions/have play dates to increase his confidence?

We to go about three different groups a week and mix them up. DD usually starts sitting quite close to me before slowly getting more confident/moving further away and that’s with her doing quite a few since she was a few months old.

My 9 yo ds is nonverbal, it can be very tough some days especially when he gets frustrated because he can tell us what he wants/needs sometimes, majority of the time he can communicate his wants/needs by showing us/body language/ pointing and PECs so we manage day to day pretty successfully without the need for him to be able to talk xx