What age did your SN child talk?

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Just interested to know if speech has come late with any of yours and how it has developed since? DS1 has developmental delay and had many ear infections when younger, he started to copy sounds and words for a short time when he was 18 m old but then had another ear infection and it stopped. He doesn't have ASD and is very interactive and communicative in a non-verbal way, but his expressive and receptive speech is still very delayed. He is using PECS and doing well with that, but has never picked up on signing.

Does anyone have an older child whose speech came late, ie after 5 or 6? No-one has ever said DS1 won't talk ever but I just wondered if it is a possibility?

Hi
My son was talking ( a bit) and babbling A LOT at 20 months. Then had chicken pox and MMR and imediately lost all speech, babbling and desire to communicate.
We used diet changes and supplements at around age 3 and speech started to come back at about 4. He can make himself understood now pretty well although residual ASD affects his understanding. He has a vocab of several hundred words so he does pretty well. We were told at 2 1/2 that development of speech was unlikely ......ha!

8 and we're still waiting. The people who have been working with ds1 recently have worked with children who started to speak at 8 and 13. My friend met someone (ASD, now very high functioning adult) who only learned to talk aged 13.

How's his imitation Pages? I haven't come across a child who has learned to speak without first learning to imitate. Not saying its impossible, but I think much harder (and one reason why lots of prorammes work first on imitation). Of course being able to imitate doesn't meant that speech will definitely follow.

Not good, gess. He doesn't really imitate at all. He has always babbled on and off over the years and does on occasion seem to use mum-mum-mum in context lately. Whenever he babbles, we imitate him though, and he laughs.

He loves it when we make animal noises and sing and he will push your hand or mouth to do actions or say something/sing again. He anticipates well and makes very good eye contact, and seems to love sound, music and language when it comes from us. But he never copies us.

It is odd that for a period of about two weeks when he was 18 m old that he imitated everything I said (raining, swing, red, chair...) and then it just stopped (coinciding with a cold and ear infection) and then has never started again.

It's encouraging that it can develop later. I heard once that if a child isn't walking by 5 they probably aren't going to (although I know of a girl with very severe learning diffiulties who walked at 6)so I wasn't sure if it was the same with talking.

dd is 12 and has cp. she has some "words" that are very clear. like "hurry up" but on the whole we are still waiting.

A friend runs residential units for older children and has had kids as old as 15 develop speech for the first time. But I think by and large this is children with ASD or similar.

They say 'if a child isn;t talking by 5 they won't' but I have it on good authority that that is utter bollocks!

Can he imitate actions? Things like clapping? If not, probaby worth working on that first before speech.

DS started talking OK, but not loads at 18 months (single words, one/two/three etc, the basics). Then he had loads and loads of colds/bugs for about 6 months plus after that (which may of course be pure coincidence), but his speech never really took off after that, and hasn't improved all that much since then tbh, so is officially very delayed. IIRC Donna Williams and Caiseal Mor (?sp) were very late talkers with ASD - 8 plus.

Yes agree with Fio & you have to decide what you decide is speech. I kind of divide into non- verbal (ds1 although he is vocal); single appropriate rather than random) words, speech but not conversational, & conversational.

Oh yes, I realise he isn't going to just started talking in sentences! I just wondered if he is going to talk at all.

What age did your DD start Fio?

My ds has cerebral palsy, so not sure if this is relevant, but he didn't imitate sounds AT ALL and now that he is 8yo, he is suddenly trying to copy the last word of my sentence and really enjoying himself! He can say a few words such as yes, no, more. But now he tries really hard to make new sounds, and being fairly successful too.

Basically: never give up hope!

I'm sure he won't make sentences, but just to say one word to get his message across would be lovely.

My DS is autistic and started some basic signing around his 2nd birthday (after a LOT of input from us). His first words appeared around the time he was 2.8, and he had around 50 words when he turned 3. He has just turned 4 and is now talking in short sentences. His main problem is articulation - there are a lot of sound substitutions (t for k, d for g etc.), and a lot of missing sounds, although they are now slowly starting to appear. Strangers don't really understand him at all tbh.
He always used to babble a lot, and I'm now starting to wonder if maybe he was trying really hard to speak, and we just couldn't understand him. Then again, he never even copied animal noises until he was around 3, so maybe not...

How lovely for you twoisplenty! That's an encouraging message too. Tbh I am not the type to give up hope on anything...

No talking here yet, just the occasional mum-mum. dd2 is 6. I do feel she understands some words in context eg bed, milk. School are working on one-word understanding and are having limited success with PECS. I'm not sure I really believe she will ever talk.

dd1 is 4 and has some meaningful single words and will occasionally string words and signs together e.g the other day she said "Baboo stairs" and signed sleep. Which meant Baboo (her name for dd2!) is upstairs sleeping.

I don't really expect her to ever have proper conversational language.

btw - I had heard that if a child hadn't walked by 8 then they wouldn't be able to. Just goes to show that none of these things are set in stone.

DS1 is HFA so talked fluently by a year

DS3 has some words, but doesn't use them reliable- on an occasional basis (twice, months apart) has strung together 5 or 6; most days ahrdly says much at all

We've been told he will speak (as in a convo), but no guarantees when.