Social communication skills

[needhopeandluck]

Paediatrician said my 2.6 year old has social communication skills delay and severe receptive language delay. Too early for an ASD assessment, they usually do not do it before 3 unless there is a very obvious case.
What sort of support can be accessed for supporting social communication skills development? Not sure where to start...nursery have not been very helpful so far.
Most of the time I do not think he is on the spectrum, but that he has a delay and he will catch up in his own time...but sometimes I wonder whether I am in denial.
He has been making great progress with his speech in the last few months (we had almost no words at 2) and he started understanding some instructions (although still very far behind his peers). The downside is that he is not using words functionally yet. He knows the word for chocolate for example, but he still leads us by hand to it instead of using the word to ask for it.
Would really appreciate some suggestions and advice.

Has a referral to SALT been made?

If you are in an area where Portage support DC attending nursery, are they involved?

If the nursery needs more advice, have they asked for advice from the Area SENCO?

F

@aladdinmum would you kindly be able to make some suggestions? I have seen some of your older posts and you seem very knowledgeable.

Hanen's It takes two to talk and More than words are often recommended.

@aladdinmum Paediatrician said social comms delay... is that a thing or is she not ready to say social communication disorder in the absence of an assessment? My son scores 2 on M-CHAT. That is because he does not answer to his name and does not yet understand lots of instructions (only a few in the last few weeks - at 2.6 I would say he is the level of an 18 month old, he understood nothing half a year ago, so he has definitely made progress; he knows over 200 words but he is not yet conversational - very good visual memory). Lately everything seems to be a red flag: he flaps his arms a bit when he gets upset or is super happy, sometimes walks on his toes, he is not really interested in most people and makes little contact with them - he can literally be in a room with people and not looking at them once although I know he is observing them; other people he smiles at and hugs (normal eye contact and interaction with us parents), he started saying and waving bye at 2 but after some weeks he stopped. The occupational therapist observed him at nursery recently and said that he has no shared attention and that he is on his own agenda (clear to me what she was hinting at). After I told her that a SALT and an ABA therapist both confirmed he has joint attention with us parents, she rephrased to say his shared attention is very short spanned. Any thoughts or recommendations? Should I just bite the bullet and do an ASD assessment? Not knowing is killing me. I just see red flags everywhere and because he does not respond to his name other people are also hinting or asking if he is on the spectrum.

@SalmonWellington I have them both, thank you. Half way through More than words. It is a long one :)

Hi @needhopeandluck .

My ds is very similar to yours. He is 2.3. he has very limited receptive language and at the moment no words. He had about 6 words but has since lost these. He communicates by hand leading. in the last few weeks he is starting to follow a few simple commands...hold hands, give me kiss, turn off the lights, go upstairs.

I have found Laura Mize...teach me to talk website very helpful. She has a list of prelinguistic skills that all children must acquire before communicating. I have been trying to build on these skills and I do think he is making progress.

Sorry to jump on the original posters post. I wondered if you’d mind sharing what you have been doing. Very similar here 2.4 a recent influx of imitation of actions without objects (as per Laura Mize) and copying of sounds, initiating interaction etc, following some instructions etc and couple of words. Feels like it’s starting to click. How is your little one doing now!

@ToddlerMumma21 my son is now 2.7 and he is literally adding new words every day and is also stringing 2-3 words together. We are not there yet with pragmatics though. He uses words to describe things, but has not figured out that he can use words to ask for things.

Wow! That’s wonderful news. I hope we follow a similar path here. Sounds like he’s doing really well!

@needhopeandluck that's brilliant. It's so great to hear such fantastic progress.

@Hoth is your son pointing and imitating? It all started there for us. Best wishes for good progress!

@needhopeandluck He is still not pointing. Starting to do a little bit of visual imitation but no verbal imitation yet. What age did your son start these skills?

@Hoth pointing at 24 months, imitating at 25 months. But they are so different. Read a lot of posts where children started pointing at 2.6.

@needhopeandluck How did you encourage your son to point? Sorry about all the questions

@Hoth I pointed to everything all the time but it was more to encourage him after he did it a few times on his own. There are some good tips online on how to teach pointing (popping bubbles, finger painting, etc.).

@needhopeandluck Thanks so much for your tips. I will definitely include these in our day