Speech Delay/Problems

[rueyrichardson]

We have a DS aged 2.5 years. He is cared for at home by my DH and is a very happy little boy. He tends to meet developmental milestones after his peers - he was 15 days late to be born :) for example - but generally crawled, walked and used words together in sentences, after the babies in our NCT group. Today we were chatting socially with a Speech Therapist on another matter, entirely un-related to DS's speech, and she mentioned that she felt his speech was poor for his age and that he is substituting too many sounds within his words. He does know a lot of words but it's true that really only my DH and I understand them. She recommended a referral to a speech therapist to work with us. He has only really been stringing words together for two months or so, and I am reluctant to make a visit to the Health Visitor/surgery to start a "labelling" process for him, I would rather give him some more time. Or am I being ignorant & naive? Thanks for reading!

My daughter had speech therapy as she had trouble with various sounds she had a lovely therapist, she learned exercises with her Tongue and practice sheets for home, no labels, no judgement and after a year was discharged. I would refer as it can be a long wait.

My Ds2 attends an ICAN nursery which he absolutely adores. I agree that it makes sense to approach a health visitor now as it can take a while to hear about a referral and if things improve in the meantime, then that's that! Early intervention can make a massive difference in most cases. My DS2 has always been a happy child, but since his speech has improved his confidence has really soared. I really wouldn't worry about a "label" and you may have everything to gain.

Great, good to hear it's all positive, thanks for responding!