Hello everyone
This is the first time I've posted, but I'm a long-time reader.
Some background - I have 2 little boys, ds1 who recently turned 4, and ds2 who recently turned 2. I'm posting here about ds1, who has global developmental delay. He's been under the care of a paedatrician and various other professionals since the age of about 10 months, when the medical doctor treating him for reflux noted some concerns. He sat up at 10.5 months, crawled at 12.5 months and walked just before 2 years, although it took him a good 6 months to get confident. He had a brain MRI and blood / chromosome tests at 12 months, and more in-depth chromosome tests in the past few months, all of which have come back fine. He is happy and very affectionate little boy who attends private nursery 3 days a week - nursery have been great with him, but do struggle sometimes due to his short attention span and frequent unwillingness to do what he's told!
Basically, he appears to be following a 'normal' path of development, just slower than his peers. So far we have no reason for this, although doctors do continue to monitor his small head circumference. He has made progress in some areas, but still experiences significant difficulties with fine motor skills and speech and language.
My husband attended the Hanen programme for parents a couple of years ago, and we have a couple of the Hanen books, which we try to follow the principles of, but sometimes struggle a little as it's not always easy to be in that mindset 100% of the time. He does see an NHS speech therapist, but his contact with her is not frequent, and I often feel he simply there for review. A lot of the advice we receive from her is based on the Hanen principles as well, so we are often receiving advice we are already aware of, which is nobodies fault.
About 6 months ago he was referred to a specialist communication clinic at my insistence. I had queried whether he could have verbal dyspraxia - this was ruled out, and the conclusion was that he did not have a language disorder, but more of delay in line with his other delays - they estimated the delay to be approximately 1 year. Another discovery was that his understanding was not as good as we thought it was - we always thought his understanding was far better then his expressive language, but apparently not - this has become more obvious to me in the past 6 months now, which I guess is the significant factor in his expressive speech delay.
Anyway, with him due to be starting school next year (we are in Scotland), and with the realisation that his language skills are now on a par with his little brother, I feel that we need to try and help him a little more. I was thinking about possibly trying to contact a private speech therapist, with the hope that perhaps they could visit him at nursery on a more frequent basis. So, I've posted here to say hello and share our story, but to also ask if anyone has any recommendations for good private speech therapists in the Edinburgh area?
Congratulations if you've reached this far :) Many thanks for listening!