concerns over 3 year old.

[Violet44]

Ds2 is 3 and just started nursery. He's not settled well. I have a few concerns about him, especially when I see him next to all the other children.

My older child was assessed for autism but not diagnosed, he has been under speech therapy and ot. Having researched autism, am pretty sure ds2 isn't on the spectrum. However here are my concerns.

His speech although not delayed and he was talking in sentences before 2, is unclear at times. I referred him to SALT. He had an appointment, she said his sound system was immature but not too concerning at his age and she assessed his listening, understanding, and attention. She wasn't concerned about that, and will review him in 6 months. He also has a stammer which is quite pronounced at times and he struggles to get words out. This has developed since seeing speech therapist so I didn't mention it. Have been doing some exercises on the speech sounds he doesn't get from ds2's speech therapy and we have made progress on one sound but there are some he jus can't seem to make even.

He's chatty at home when we're out if someone asks him a question he won't speak. If we're in a large group he becomes quite clingy and wants to be picked up.

He is very little for his age, at 3, he is in 18-24 month trousers.I know some children are just little but me dh and ds1 are all tall.

He doesn't seem to listen. Doesn't sit still at groups. Doesn't listen to a story or seem to understand a story

He wants cuddles a lot and makes a silly humming noise. He often just jumps on top of his brother or grabs his head for no reason.

I think that's all for now. He plays nicely with his brother and has a couple of friends whom he runs after and copies but doesn't talk much to them.

Could be aware that talking is a effort and he's not great therefore withdraws?

Does he initiate talk with you? Will he chat about more than his basic needs?

My da has a language disorder and was very aware so didn't like talking. Plus it was a effort for him. Mind you I knew he had big problems since he was 18 months so it was / is quite a issue

At home he is very chatty, he initiates communication and yes talks about more than his needs. He talks about what he sees happening, tells me what he's done at nursery, asks me to play with him, uses language in his play, plays nicely with his brother. I suspect he's very shy but also his speech is hindering him and making him anxious to speak. I guess I just keep on working on speech sounds and wait till qe see speech threrapist again. I don't know what else I can do.

I know that some others might not agree here,but.....

Nhs slt are very unfounded and overstretched. I waited a year to be told my son had a mild delay. Turned out he has dyspraxia and a receptive and expressive language disorder.

I had a private assessment years later. It was miles off the NHS one.

However I also have a toddler and he's under the hospital slt. She picked up he has asd when he was 2.

Private slt assesment with a report was about £120 and it pretty much answered everything. If I had had it while under nhs ( discharged at 5.5) I could have used it to ask why they differed so much. Why they didn't pick any of this up

That interestingesting, thanks. Did the private slt assessment diagnose that straight away?

We actually had really good nhs speech therapy for my eldest but we are under a different borough for my youngest (we live close to the border for two areas.) I was surprised she wasn't concerned about his speech sounds because my eldest was younger when he was referred but it was speech sounds they worked on.

I wonder about dyspraxia with my eldest as he didn't meet criteria for an autism diagnosis, and his speech therapy says he's not autistic but has hinted at dyspraxia. OT said he has motor planning issues. However DS2 doesn't seem to have same co-ordination difficulties as DS1.

OT diagnosed dyspraxia with pead which took about three years back and fourth but the OT told me off the record o his second assesment.

Private SLT diagnosed Lang disorder. SLT here is £60 a hour so she did a full celf then wrote up a report. I would never have got that on the NHS. They still insist he has a mild delay. Because they can't afford for it to be anything else