increasingly worried about speech - words and pronounciation, not copying words.

[Summerdaydreams]

DD is 2.6yrs actual, 2.3yrs corrected. (Undiagnosed CP, cant crawl or walk) Her understanding is brilliant, she follows all instructions understands everything we say, good attention etc. but as the weeks fly past and turn into months I am getting more worried about her lack of words and inability to copy words back to me.

She calls mummy, daddy, says yes, no, in there, oggie (doggie), up, hello, she has some others and can put a few words together like "where you go?"," dere yet" ". I doh wan ooo" which she tends to use in context and lots and lots during the day.

But If I say "DD say mummy" words I know she can and words I am trying to encourage her to say she replies "agga". In fact this is her standard reply to everything if is asked to repeat a word back. Failing "agga" she will say "no"

SALT say she is bottoms end of age appropriate by I am not so sure.

We are waiting for our next lot of SALT input so in the meantime does anyone have any tips? Advice, reassurance, anything please please?

I can't give you any reassurance, but 2y 6m is quite young for speech therapists. Children need to be old enough to be able to pay attention and engage with the speech therapist.

My dd was diagnosed with a language disorder at 2y 10m, so I'm not sure whether your dd will be capable of these, as she is slightly younger. I was advised to:

1. improve attention - by doing table top activities like painting, drawing, jigsaws. Anything to extend her attention, by getting her to sit down and attend for longer.
2. read to her every day - pointing things out in the pictures, especially where they demonstrate verbs/colours/etc - ie look at that person running/clapping/sleeping....Demonstrate the verbs yourself -what am I doing - jumping, clapping, etc.
3. teach her concepts like colours, numbers, concepts (like big, small, in, on, under) - playing games for example with duplo. "Here is the green brick. Here is the yellow brick." Teddies tea parties - "Give the big teddy the plate. Give little teddy the plate." or "Put the plate under the table. Put the plate on the table. Put the plate in the box" - to teach in, on, under.
4. Push up the key word level for comprehension. Small words like and, the, etc are not necessary in small children for comprehension, they may only be at the one or two or three key word level. One word level "do my zip up" - the key word is zip. There are two key words in "Give teddy the plate." and three in "Give teddy the green plate."
5. Get an alarm clock or cooking timer, set it to go off, hidden somewhere in the room and dd has to find the thing making the noise - if she can't walk/crawl, maybe point to it. Teaches them to pinpoint where noise is coming from. (Auditory discrimination)
6. Get a selection of toy musical instruments/things that make a noise - hide them behind a piece of cloth/board/whatever and make the noise with it. She has to guess which musical instrument made the noise.
7. Lots of nursery rhymes and rhyming games - improves phonological awareness
8. teach turn taking - playing simple games appropriate to her age. Important skill for conversation.

Even if your dd turns out not to have any problems with speech and/or language, she'll enjoy the games and learn important basic skills, which will come in useful at school.

I'm sorry, I know nothing about CP, but why is it undiagnosed?

Imo Undiagnosed due to the doctors dragging their feet. She has all the symptoms, was very prem with a significant episode which put at at even higher risk, but they now, won't diagnose until MRI is done.

Thanks for the tips and ideas, We already do a lot of that stuff, she knows her colours, points out all objects in books when asked "where is the...?" And her comprehension seems to be age appropriate or older.

It just seems she uses the same sounds and the variety of sounds doesn't seem to be evolving, whether this is a CP thing I don't know. Did your dd benefit from SALT input??

I don't have any experience of CP, sorry, but my DD 2y5m was in a similar position with speech up until very recently. Background is DS has autism, he's 4 and a half, so we were hyper vigilant with DD as a result. When she turned 2 she was saying far less than your DD. She really only said 'meh' which was her word for 'yes'. She understood everything, pointed, could carry out instructions etc, but wouldn't repeat anything, made no attempt to talk. We referred her into SALT, and started down the road to see someone privately (rather than wait).

Then, one day, for no obvious reason, she started copying and talking. She must have been about 2y3m or so. Slowly at first but then snowballed and now she's never quiet! In just a couple of months. It did coincide with me starting her on a multivitamin (as she is a veg refuser) but that's probably not related.

We were doing a lot of things suggested by tempe, as we'd done them to get DS talking. But we were about to start Hanen It Takes Two To Talk privately. I'm pretty sure that would have helped if she hadn't started herself. Hope that maybe reassures you a bit.