Speech delay

Sharonyap2505

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I have the exact same concern as you. My son is 24 months and only says about 5 to 10 words maximum when other kids his age are already speaking in short phrases. He also expresses what he wants my pulling my hand and pointing. I'm abit concerned as my 1st son did not have this issue.

Im sending him to preschool next month, and hoping that the school exposure can help his development.
 

angy

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I am reading a book "perfom under pressure" by Dr Ceri Evans. I believe Kinokinuya has it. Dont buy it. See if you can read it there.
Read Page 32-38. The section is called "how our early years set the pattern".

I find it very true for parents who has speech delayed children and how they are trying to help them.
 

angy

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I have the exact same concern as you. My son is 24 months and only says about 5 to 10 words maximum when other kids his age are already speaking in short phrases. He also expresses what he wants my pulling my hand and pointing. I'm abit concerned as my 1st son did not have this issue.

Im sending him to preschool next month, and hoping that the school exposure can help his development.

I highly recommend go see a speech therapist and get an EIP in place to assist your son. The earlier you do it, the more your son is able to help himself and the less stress you will get.
 

Doc Madatay

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1. Go for immediate assessment dont wait or hope it will be better
2. If there is an issue then early intervention is the best
3. It’s not easy for parents but for the good of the child, go for assessment
4. Early childhood is important for child development, don’t wait

Keep us posted
 

Peppy123

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Hmmm my son could not even say more than 5 words by 3.5 years. NUh said he got severe speech delay and recommended therapy which I refused due to waste time n money. He started talking at 3yr7mth. Now he just turn 5 and can even debate about issues on social distancing and why electric cars is better than petrol cars. He reads so much and has good ability to recognize many difficult words. I think don't worry, your kid might be accumulating knowledge if he don't speak. You should wait til 4 to assess.
 

Arcanell

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Hmmm my son could not even say more than 5 words by 3.5 years. NUh said he got severe speech delay and recommended therapy which I refused due to waste time n money. He started talking at 3yr7mth. Now he just turn 5 and can even debate about issues on social distancing and why electric cars is better than petrol cars. He reads so much and has good ability to recognize many difficult words. I think don't worry, your kid might be accumulating knowledge if he don't speak. You should wait til 4 to assess.

every child is different. what works for you may not work for others.

ts, suggest you to seek medical expert help
 

angy

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Hmmm my son could not even say more than 5 words by 3.5 years. NUh said he got severe speech delay and recommended therapy which I refused due to waste time n money. He started talking at 3yr7mth. Now he just turn 5 and can even debate about issues on social distancing and why electric cars is better than petrol cars. He reads so much and has good ability to recognize many difficult words. I think don't worry, your kid might be accumulating knowledge if he don't speak. You should wait til 4 to assess.

I am so happy that your son is not speech delay and that the doctor is wrong. How is he social skills?
 

xiaobao54

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I have went for the assessment today and doc initial diagnosis is my son has a few development milestone which are not met which are mainly the communication and speech area. We will be going for some therapy session and review will only be in end dec to determine if my son has make any improvement or requires further treatment.

I feel the wait is too long (from now till dec) to be able to get a diagnosis and am afraid that it might be too late then to only start to intervene. Should i go to a private pediatrian to expedite the process? I read that early intervention programme requires referral and they do accept private referral too.

So TS did you go for private route or still waiting for kkh diagnosis appt at the end of the year, and got observe any improvement on your son?
 

tinkmagood

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I am a speech pathologist and I thought I should reply to give some suggestions.

The general benchmark for a child to acquire his/her first word is around 12-24 months. From my experience, by 16 months the child should have his first word. It should not be something that the child imitates from what you are saying, but something that the child says independently and knows exactly what he is referring to. So in short mama/dada doesnt count, ball can could if the child says it independently to request the ball without you modelling the word ball.

Someone suggested to use PECs but again, the child should be reviewed by a speech language pathologist to deem the feasibility of this. I am not a fan of PECs as it is rote learning and highly dependent on rewards. the child will be 'programmed' to request because he knows that if he point to the right picture and give it to the adult, he will get what he wants but he don't know why he is doing this. In other words, communication isn't meaningful to him, we want the child to want to communicate because the child is interested in you or the thing. There are other free things out there that can be used to build a child's language. Something like an aided language stimulation board/core language board will be useful. For children who are still learning how to talk, meaning they are only at one word level, using these boards might be useful as you introduce new words to the child and model how to use this words. In time, the child will know oh mummy is pointing to eat apple, this means that she wants me to eat the apple, I will eat the apple now. With frequent modelling, the child will then independently use it on his own. There are consistent research out there that shows that using a language board for children who are still developing talking skills WILL NOT hinder speech and language development. In fact, there are research that shows that it actually helps to expedite the process.

There are some children that are late talkers, meaning children who do not say their first words until they are 3 years old and suddenly have an explosion of language skills. Boys are more likely to be late talkers but do take note that the cohort of children that are not talking, only around 20% are considered late talkers while the remaining 80% are language delayed/disordered. Hence early intervention is the key and I would definitely suggest not to wait it out as the child could miss critical milestones that are essential for communication development. A good app that I highly recommend to parents to track the child's developmental milestone is developed by the Centres for Disease and Control and Prevention's Learn the Signs and act early program. It is free and allows you to track your child's milestone and if it is not age appropriate will let you know to seek services. https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/index.html

There are various language modelling techniques that are useful for children who are language delayed/disordered or even for typically developing children that you want to boost their language skills. Since speech therapy may be costly or has a long waiting list, I would suggest you all to use these if you are concerned while waiting for these services. Again, I don't know any of your children and so these are suggestions and not absolute directions. Every child is different and their language learning progression is different.

1) Parallel and Self Talk
These are by far my favourite and I always recommend to my parents. Basically Parallel talk meaning that you are narrative what your child is doing while self-talk you are narrating what you are doing.

Parallel Talk eg (your child is playing with a ball)

Child: (actions bouncing the ball)
Mum: Oh Daniel, look at you, you are bouncing the ball. Bounce bounce bounce!

Self Talk (in a play activity with bubbles)

Mum: Mummy is going to blow the bubbles. I am going to blow a big one. Ready set....go!

2) Commenting rather than questioning

Before a child can have the ability to answer the questions, he first has to be in a language rich environment where the people around him are using self talk, parallel talk, descriptions and comments so he can learn the vocabulary and language first. Though it is definitely OK to ask your child questions sometimes that they cannot answer- especially of infants and toddlers (while then providing them the answer right after) you want to balance this with questions that he/she can answer without help while continuing to provide your child with good language models through the use of the strategies already mentioned.

Sometimes, we all fall into the trap where start questioning the child. Questioning is especially difficult for a child who has difficulties talking and it actually makes him stress and might prevent him to communicate further because he knows that he needs to reply but he cant reply. e.g. "Daniel what colour is this? "Daniel what do you want to eat etc."

Commenting is much safer because you are just making an opinion on something and it is not required of the child to reply. Therefore the key is to use think alouds like ohhhh I wonder.... going back to the colour eg, I wonder what colour is it? and you can follow up with a forced choice is it blue or is it red? With these options, the child is likely to reply and engage with you!


Feel free to ask any questions, happy to answer!
 
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AngelsInTheSkies

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I brought my 19 months old toddler for his assessment recently. The PD said my son might be autistic because he couldn’t call mama or papa. Then she claimed he got development issues like cannot listen to command. I don’t find it justified as she placed some toys in front of him and then she just pointed her finger to the ceiling and asked him to look up while his full attention was onto the toys. Just because of that and she claimed my son is autistic. The fact that he could sort the blocks by colour and stacked them up.

I find these days all the young PD really inexperienced by making such assumptions so quickly and without a proper assessment. It was a brief and quick appointment like 10 mins and she straight away told me about autistic, slow development and speech delay. I’d rather seek a second opinion than letting her causing me unnecessary anxiety or depression.
 

Spirax

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Hmmm my son could not even say more than 5 words by 3.5 years. NUh said he got severe speech delay and recommended therapy which I refused due to waste time n money. He started talking at 3yr7mth. Now he just turn 5 and can even debate about issues on social distancing and why electric cars is better than petrol cars. He reads so much and has good ability to recognize many difficult words. I think don't worry, your kid might be accumulating knowledge if he don't speak. You should wait til 4 to assess.
Sometime feel vaccine injection may cause some speech delay for first 30mths
 

mickey88

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So how the TS review of the kid?? My kid can said papa,mama and jie jie..not much..but seem my kids all slow development in speech even my eldest..can oni talk more when she is at 3 yr plus
 

BrOwnTeddy

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He will point or pull my hand to the kitchen.
Don't encourage that nonsense by indulging him.

its similar to parents when they are handling a kid's tantrum. The child wants something. The parent make no attempts to let the child say what he/she wants but keep giving them things until they "tikam tikam" get the correct answer. Then, hey presto! Child quietens down! Tikam correct!

start by asking in complete sentences yourself too.

"yes? What is it you want?"

squat down to child's level, look at them in the eyes and ask if there's anything they need or need help with.

if the child points to kitchen then you express it for them, "kitchen? What is it you want from the kitchen? Can you tell me?"

of course, not expecting the child to cough up a 1000 word essay to describe what they want. But simple words - "food". Or "sweet". Or "mum mum".

then complete the sentence for them first before bringing them to the place and then asking them again, what do they want and where is it?

don't hand them every damned thing on a silver platter. Even queen elizabeth need to stretch her hand out to her china cups for her tea. Her butler doesn't do it for her.

that's how u encourage speech and expression. Typically, everyday communications like this will result the child being able to communicate and express themselves properly in full and or complex sentences by the time they are 6.

talk more.
 

BrOwnTeddy

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I brought my 19 months old toddler for his assessment recently. The PD said my son might be autistic because he couldn’t call mama or papa. Then she claimed he got development issues like cannot listen to command. I don’t find it justified as she placed some toys in front of him and then she just pointed her finger to the ceiling and asked him to look up while his full attention was onto the toys. Just because of that and she claimed my son is autistic. The fact that he could sort the blocks by colour and stacked them up.

I find these days all the young PD really inexperienced by making such assumptions so quickly and without a proper assessment. It was a brief and quick appointment like 10 mins and she straight away told me about autistic, slow development and speech delay. I’d rather seek a second opinion than letting her causing me unnecessary anxiety or depression.
Nowadays every damned thing is either depression, autistic, ADHD or what.

people just wan to seek the easy way out by not paying attention AND encouraging speech.

end up get caught in a vicious cycle requiring therapy or medication.

talk more to the kid even though u need to put ur work or that handphone down.

19mths only no need to bring to PD for speech assessment or what. Work on communication. For example, if the kid wants something at 19mths, they should at least point to the item they need or want and say a simple "want", or an "ok?"

Once they hit 24mths, infant care (if u are a busy professional). The social interaction they will get will develop their speech patterns (unless u wanna talk to them everyday).

by 19mths, a baby should be able to respond to higher order cues like displaying sympathy, interest (look at their eyes or reactions like smiles, frowns, etc).

a child who is able to express higher order thinking and express proper sympathy to other beings is NOT AUTISTIC.
 
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