Speech and language therapy for a 2.5 year old, help!

[Otterses]

DS has been referred to a speech and language therapist and paediatrician for his speech delay and lack of understanding, but I'm expecting delays in him accessing the help he may need due to the coronavirus outbreak. I'm hopefully going to be lucky enough to go to work on a rota basis, so should get a fair few days at home with him during the week to try to support him as best I can with his speech.

He says about ten words, generally without context, and can pick up tunes to music quickly (occasionally using a word he knows in the song or just babbling to mimic the song). He really struggles linking words to what they mean.

I'm just wondering if anyone has any links to good resources or suggestions of stuff we can do at home? We do the usual reading/singing/talking. I've had a google but to be honest I have zero clue what I'm doing any help greatly appreciated.

Hanen book "More than words" is great, though expensive. It was recommended to me here, by several speech therapists, in the UK and the country I'm in now. It's aimed for kids with ASD but can be applied to children with communication and speech delays.

My DS is 2.5yo as well - we only understood his speech delay was a to really issue a few months ago. All the best to you and your DS.

Talking Point is a great website.

They certainly used to also have a service where you can arrange an appointment to talk to a Speech and Language Therapist for half an hour - not sure if that is still available (?) but they have other resources too.

Unfortunately all of the speech therapists in my area have been redeployed due to covid-19, we have had our sessions stopped completely at the moment for our son. I hope it isn't the same where you are and you hear something from them soon 🤞

When we were referred to speech and language and a paediatrician like you (just after our sons 2 year review, he also had less than 10 words at the time), it was also suggested by our hv that trying sign language with our son might help ease his frustrations and make it easier to communicate, so we went on a signalong course and it made such a difference for us. It has led to him eventually starting to say more words as well as signing them. Is that something you have considered? Our speech and language therapist also teaches him a new sign at the same time as teaching a new concept and it works really well for us. The signalong charity have an app which you can download, it doesn't contain all signs but it is really useful to have on your phone and you can search for 50 signs a month.

If you are on Instagram there are some really good speech therapists on there who offer advice and ideas for activities etc, good ones I have found so far include; peachyspeech (she is a particular favourite of mine), speech.mama_, speechandlanguageacademy, speak life slt (insert underscores where there are spaces, sorry it won't let me put them in without messing it up), speechbrain, speechymusings.

Happy to chat more if you want to send me a private message 🙂

I forgot to say in my previous message (I apologise in advance if you know these things) we were advised by our speech therapist to keep the language we use really simple & use short sentences. I've actually found since I've started to use shorter commands I get a quicker response, so instead of saying "come to the table now please" if I say his name and then "table" I don't have to repeat myself a hundred times!

If they try to say something but don't say it correctly, don't say to them "no that's not right it's x", you should repeat back to them what they said but model how you say it correctly, for example if he says "ome" you would say "that's right! Home!" Try to build on sentences, if they point something out to you for example by saying "car!" you can reply with "yes, red car"

We were told by our community paediatrician that children need to know roughly 50 words before they will start to combine words and say two words together. This finally happened for us last month and I was so excited (our son will be 4 in July).

Hope that helps, if I think of anything else I'll let you know!

SLT here. We have restarted work via video already so it might not be as long as you think fingers crossed. I'd definitely consider the use of signing. Have a look at makaton - Mr tumble and singing hands a good start. Google All about me - it's a free first makaton resource to get you started

Thanks both for your advice. We did sing and sign until about 18m when he lost interest. He learned to do a couple of signs, milk and help, but now that he can say them he doesn't use them. We could start again though.

What I've actually found during lockdown and after a month's break from therapy is that DS has actually made big jumps in communication and babbling on his own. Lots more eye contact, picking up words he used to say as well as new ones, repeating after us, quiet interest in looking at books rather than flipping through them, pointing at things and checking we are looking. This in spite of a deterioration in therapy games at home and too much screen time, though we are still trying to implement some of the communication techniques into everyday. It is making me question the value of therapy even though we were really happy with it, and whether having me at home is making a bigger difference.

The other thing is that I'm more concerned about is a Facebook group I joined that includes autistic parents as well as parents with autistic kids, which is very anti-ABA. There is the suggestion that some of the techniques the therapists and us have been employing - rewarding eye contact - is actually very harmful. Our ST said she uses a mix of eclectic techniques, and has not mentioned ABA though a lot of what she she does has some reward aspect like revealing an object, performing an action or giving praise. I'm suddenly very unsure. I had complete trust in the professionals, and since the advice had been fairly consistent across the board and across countries, I didn't question it. But now I am. I feel some of what the Facebook group are suggesting is a little extreme because DS really enjoys therapy and if he was unfair about any of it I would stop. But the therapy does push him out of his comfort zone a little, and the Facebookers say that it is abusive and will cause long-term harm, that this idea of having a limited time to bring him out of his world into our world is wrong. It did make me think that I shouldn't be so unquestioning with our therapists, that I can be more critical, and that perhaps the therapy that many are buying into is not necessarily the best way to go. But the alternative seems to be to let DS just go at his own pace, don't push him to do anything he doesn't want to, communicate in his own way, let him enjoy his own world...

I feel quite helpless again. Is there a resource I can use that discusses both viewpoints in a balanced way?

We also had plans to start DS at an early intervention centre in the summer, really one of the most highly recommended and the head also happens to be critical of ABA. Our therapists thought that he might not benefit from it now but he might do after a few months of therapy so the timing works out well with his start date. But with lockdown, he'll be missing at least 2 months of therapy so I'm questioning whether we should push it back to next term. And also whether we should send him at all if separation anxiety becomes an issue - he's more clingy and attached to me now than ever. At the same time, I can't stay at home with him forever - I'm the sole breadwinner and it's not a good time to reconsider my job.

Always question your slt if concerned. There are tons of different techniques approaches. Different ones suit different families. It maybe that you and your child are better suited to a more child led approach such as hanen rather than a more directive approach - ABA being the extreme end of the spectrum for this. Lockdown maybe helping we often find holidays, christmas etc do. It's a change of scene new vocab different experiences. But also completely randomly children make huge leaps forward for no apparent reason. Its one of the reasons the evidence bases can be weak as we never know for certain what is therapy gain or what is spontaneous improvement. In most cases its a mixture of both plus all sorts of other good things the family are doing eg groups, nurseries, finding a certain toy helps. Please don't do anything you feel uncomfortable with, sometimes you just need to pause, digest and tehn re start therapy if you want to