speech and language

[Summer10101]

My LO will be 3 years old next month. She meet all her milestones when she was younger. She would attend day centres when I was on maternity leave. I noticed when she was nearly two, she was not saying as many words as her peers. She was good at using non verbal communication to communicate her needs. But she just was not saying much. I started taking her to Chattertime but felt that the small group was segregating and I noticed instead of learning to speak she was learning behaviours from other children like spining around, flapping hands etc. I found SALT were keen to just label her and were very judgemental. So I thought let me try nursery. I was not entitled to the 2 year funding. I could only afford fo my LO to go 1 -2 half or full sessions a week. My daughter hated it! She would always cry and I felt that the staff did not always have the time to support her, within a nursery setting. I noticed my daugther started to regress further. I then took her out of nursery and started home schooling. I have noticed a huge difference and improvement with her use of words. But we still have a long way to go. I try to take her out as often as I can and out with friends and their kids so she has that social interaction. I am a single parent and I work long hours. I feel abit guilty I can’t take her out every single day, but I try my best with the resources I have. I wanted to know if anyone had a similar experience and are there any support groups avaliable?

Hi,

I also have an LO who is 3 and a half now & at 2 years old he had about 10 words. We had a block of 5 SALT sessions before been put back on the waiting list. A year and a half on we still haven’t been called back round! At that time I also couldn’t afford nursery as didn’t get the 15 hours. I got myself the Hanen ‘It takes two to talk’ and just did the activities on there. I mainly just got on the ground with him and focused on language through play or flash cards to recognise objects. Although he wasn’t saying it back he was able to recognise and pick out the flash cards as I called out the names of what they were. After much thought I gave the nursery thing a go. He hated it. It was so traumatic but I didn’t give up. I didn’t feel like the staff were great so pulled him out and looked for another nursery. Again it was a nightmare settling him in. I found a lovely little nursery attached to a school. Term time only 3 hours a day. We started off an hour a day and gradually increased till we hit the 3 hours a day. It was the best thing for him. In a matter of weeks he was saying more words. I would still continue with the flash cards and he would recognise all of them. He did have a lot of other behaviours which did concern me however the more language he learnt the more he almost dropped them.

I would say try your best to find a nursery that suits you and her Maybe look at doing 3 hours a day which you build up to. Not every child can handle the settling in process that nurseries have in place. If your child needs longer by all means do it! When at home get down on the floor and engage in play..at this age this is the best way to learn. Wish you all the best

Thank you so much. I was considering looking for another nursery but the waiting list is nearly a year. So I was thinking of home schooling her untill a suitable nursey came up. I am so glad your LO is doing well and I hope it continues.

I will defo have a look at the Hanen website. Once again thank you 🤗