Feeling sad my dd is non verbal

[chicken2015]

I have a 2 and half year old girl, she is on waiting list for autism assessment, and going to get diagnosis sometime next year, she doesnt give eye contact, little interaction and doesnt acknowledge when i talk to her , she can say odd words , she babbles non stop but im just sad she doesnt talk in typical sense and keep seeing children around me talking and its making me so sad about it

It is sad seeing other people's children doing things yours can't and to be honest I still finding it creeping up on me every now and again (ds is now nearly 6).

2 is really young, she could end up speaking or she may not. But she will be able to find a way to communicate and probably already is through her behaviour. I know it's very hard to not focus on speech but there are also other ways to communicate, Makaton, pecs, aac, which might work for her.

My ds had a massive regression at 2. He lost all his language and non verbal communication as well. He had a real breakthrough at about 4 and now speaks in basic sentences and goes to a mainstream school. So it's very hard to predict what will happen.

Have you tried intensive interaction? It can be very effective at helping autistic children to engage more. It was very effective with my son, he really enjoyed it when I tried to engage with him.

The other thing that really helped here was Occupational therapy. It helped my ds to feel calmer and happier so that he could start engaging/learning more.

Thank you for replying i had forgotten i had wrote this. Yes intensive interaction is something ive been doing. She does respond well some of the time. I need to go on trainning course. Im finding it more sad at moment as have 5 month old baby girl and she is has the basics of commucation already and i can just see how far behind my toddler is.

We have been refered to OT

Hi OP, have you seen a speech therapist that specialises in pre-schoolers? at 2.5 my DS had no words, really had no way to communicate or understand language, a speech therapist who worked with nursery really helped us.

Yes we went to Speech therapist they only offer a more than words course that im starting in sept and another course called lets interact which im on waiting list for

You have every reason to feel sad OP but don’t give up hope. DS is autistic and is verbal but some of his classmates were not at the start of school. Most of them have developed good enough language skills. However I know that is not guaranteed but even then good communication can happen without speech.

There was a programme in Ireland on living with autism a few years back. I cannot find a link to the programme but this guy stole the heart of a nation with his poetry even though he is non verbal.

www.google.ie/amp/s/www.rte.ie/amp/863723/

This lady is one of my fav non verbal people out there she is absolutely hilarious

She and you will find a way, with speech or without.

Heard really good things about the more than words course, we ended up paying privately for a speech therapist, whilst the Paediatrician made the LEA pay for 1-1 support in nursery to practise speech therapy the LEA wouldn't pay for actual speech therapy and in our area the NHS doesn't fund ongoing speech therapy for suspected autism/language delays, the most you get here is 6 sessions.

Oh the website teachmetotalk is brilliant btw, it has lots of podcasts and video clips on teaching toddlers with all kinds of language difficulties to talk, there is a list on there of pre-verbal skills that toddlers go through before speech, at 2 my son had half of them and at 3 the first words came, the Paediatrician was sure that he had classic autism when she saw him at 2 and again at 2.5 but he had the ADOS/Multi disciplinary assessment at 3.5 and he was diagnosed with something else, he still has speech therapy at 4 and often his speech is unintelligible but he has made great progress. Hope you get the support you need OP.

Hi Chicken,
Hope you’re okay? Still in exactly the same position here with my DD (3.4). Trying to keep positive but I just can’t come to terms with the fact that she might be non verbal for the long term. I just can’t get my head around it. PECS has really helped us, as has a speech therapist (We ended up paying privately as we get next to nothing on the NHS). Her overall communication has improved lots, but speech wise she’s still non verbal so far.
Sending you a hug xxx

Im ok. Thanks for asking. My little girl has started requesting which is nice to see she grabs my hand and started taking me places she requested a doughnut today in shop she was crying and moaning around the shop and then pointed to doughnut and grab my hand gestering to it so brought it and let her have it while walking around shop she was still bit moany people prob thought i was giving in to tantrum or something kept getting old people talk to her which she freaks out over. Tries to explain she is autisic so struggles with people but they just wasnt taking hint. I judt said she is best if u leave her alone! They didnt seem impressed! Im like is that how it will b all the time!

that's great, she pointed at what she wanted!!! and then let you know that she really wanted it :-) that's communication try and reinforce that by giving her simple choices e.g squash in one cup and milk in another and getting her to point at which one she wants. And i would totally have given in to a tantrum in a supermarket if my DS had pointed at 2.5

Here is a link to the chart i mentioned before, [teach me to talk pre verbal skills teachmetotalk.com/2018/04/18/chart-11-skills-toddlers-master-before-words-emerge-from-lets-talk-about-talking/]

Has she pointed to show you something that she's seen that has surprised / excited her and she wants to show you?

The pointing yesterday was first time she has pointed! She doesnt really show emotion, well loves swimming when we went there she loved it her face was very excited. Well today i showed her picture of ice cream that she has had before in restutant and i showed her pic as she was getting it and she got excited and smiled but that was me showing her something, it was still good her showing some sort of emotion!

Thank for link will look

That's great, my son first pointed at 2.4 and said his first word just before turning 3.

Obviously I don't have a crystal ball and can promise that everything will be ok. But your DD is still very young and quite a lot of autistic kids acquire language, but just later than neurotypical kids. My son could only say single words at three, some very basic sentences at 4. He went to school unable to answer questions like 'what is your name'. At 5 and a half he's starting to develop conversational language (on his on terms - a lot of our chats are about underground trains, but hey ho.)

One thing that helped hugely was using soft toys to 'talk' to him, rather than us talking directly. Not having to try and focus on a real person made it simpler for him to think about the language. He came on much quicker once Upsy Daisy started talking to him rather than Mummy and Daddy...

Also look up child-directed narrated play, that helped us on the early days.

Good luck!

Thank u there r same really good ideas