Hi there, I am a speech and language therapist and to be honest at your sons age most of the work needs to be done through parents- ie SLT giving parents advice on strategies to be implemented in the home/nursery environment. At 2.5 it is very difficult to engage a child in any sort of 1:1 therapy as they don’t usually have the required attention and listening skills. Children absolutely do develop at different times and in different ways, milestones can be really useful measuring tools but also great sources of stress for parents so looking at the overall picture of how a child is developing is often most useful. For that reason an initial SLT assessment of a 2.5 year old is likely to be very play based, looking at all of their skills and interaction and involving parents a lot to gain a picture of what the child is like in various environments. There are loads of lovely resources online about how to help create a language rich environment at home which you could try in the interim while you wait for your appointment, this is a good place to start.
www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk
Services are different depending on where you live, but they are generally really really stretched which is so rough for families and therapists alike. Good luck with it all!
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My little girl is 3 and has a relatively mild speech delay. We gave up with the Health Visitors when Preschool arranged an assessment for her with their SLT. We ended up paying privately for sessions, she's just done a block of 6 and the difference has been phenomenal. I wouldn't want to wait a year on the NHS and her be so close to starting school with such a problem.
Thank you, I’ll check out the link I’ll have a look and start trying some of their suggestions.Hi there, I am a speech and language therapist and to be honest at your sons age most of the work needs to be done through parents- ie SLT giving parents advice on strategies to be implemented in the home/nursery environment. At 2.5 it is very difficult to engage a child in any sort of 1:1 therapy as they don’t usually have the required attention and listening skills. Children absolutely do develop at different times and in different ways, milestones can be really useful measuring tools but also great sources of stress for parents so looking at the overall picture of how a child is developing is often most useful. For that reason an initial SLT assessment of a 2.5 year old is likely to be very play based, looking at all of their skills and interaction and involving parents a lot to gain a picture of what the child is like in various environments. There are loads of lovely resources online about how to help create a language rich environment at home which you could try in the interim while you wait for your appointment, this is a good place to start.
Services are different depending on where you live, but they are generally really really stretched which is so rough for families and therapists alike. Good luck with it all!The Communication Trust
I think maybe I’ll speak with work and see if their private health scheme would allow me to go privately. Did you just seek out a private speech and language therapist or go via something like Bupa?
my son has speech therapy, whilst he could talk, he would often only say half a word or just duh duh for anything he couldn't say. I asked our health visitor when he was 18 months who said as he was physically very active and forward, his speech would catch up. I had my daughter when he was 2 and mentioned to the health visitor who looked after her about his speech and she helped me self refer him for therapy, (the wait time was shorter!) He was diagnosed with expressive speech delay, we were told to play blowing bubbles, blowing them fast and slow as it helped him learn to form letters and mouth movements. Also look up Mr Tongue, it has exercises that help them really focus on their tongue/mouth movements.
We were advised to repeat everything he said to us back to him so he heard how it was meant to be said. He is now 8 and been signed off from speech therapy for about a year now as has caught up with his peers and listening to him you would never know he had so much trouble!
good luck x
We were advised to repeat everything he said to us back to him so he heard how it was meant to be said. He is now 8 and been signed off from speech therapy for about a year now as has caught up with his peers and listening to him you would never know he had so much trouble!
good luck x
Hiya, just wondering how your little boy is doing now? My son is 26 months and only has a few words also, he will point to things in books if you ask him where is the ... ? But he won’t use his words to tell us his needs he just takes our hands to what we wants. He knows animal sounds to a lot of animals he waves bye bye and will point but he was very late to do this also. It’s so heartbreaking when I see other children his age chatting away and almost chatting in sentences. He would say a lot of things with his mouth closed if that makes sense? He seems to understand a lot of what we say to him and commands etc so I feel like the understanding is there. I have contacted my health visitor and she referred him for speech therapy at his 2 year review and we are waiting on an appointment from ENT to get his ears checked although I don’t think there is an issue there and he seems to hear other things perfectly well. I just feel so helpless and everyday I wake with the first start worry and anxiety about him it’s so hard.
Thanks for checking in
. He’s three at the weekend and still no words apart from Mumma really. He’s had a couple of observations by speech and language which hasn’t really been much help and they said they’ll see him again in February and if he’s still not making progress he’ll be referred to a specialist for assessment. I’m thinking more and more that he is on the spectrum although hopefully not to the extent that his life is seriously impacted. He has his little quirks that make us feel he must be but he has made great improvements in his social skills and is able to play with his peers now which he never used to do.
I wish he could tell me what’s going on inside that beautiful head of his. I hope one day he can.
I know what you mean about feeling helpless it’s horrible isn’t it. I made myself cry the other day thinking how if he was in care or a horrible family he’d be so easily abused as he can’t tell people somethings wrong. I was literally walking down the road crying my eyes out
