Language Develpoment??

li

My sister is in a blind panic about her daughter, who is 2 years and 7 months old. She is living abroad and has been told by the doctor that her daughter needs a developmental assessment as she is still not talking. My sister has to wait 4 weeks now for the assessment and is stressing herself out. The doctor asked her was there any history of mental retardation in the family, so you can understand why she is worried.
Her daughter can say a few words, but she doesn't say them very often. She will say "where u going" but that is her only sentence, and she use to say "hi how you doing" but no longer says that. She is still at the babbling stage, she babbles to her toys mainly. The doctor told my sister she should be asking questions now, using sentences and saying her name and age.
She doesn't dress herself or feed herself either at this age, which was also worrying the doctor.
Is my sister right to worry or has anyone else experienced this with their children?

Trinity

The doctor should not be worrying your sister like that.

Developmental delay does not always lead to anything more serious. A lot of children are slow starters and some catch up later.

Has she had her hearing tested? Generally IQ tests are not recommended before the age of 4 as it is very difficult not only to keep the toddlers focussed on the tasks but their writing and reading skills cant be judged properly.

If she had speech delay, its possible that this can be sorted. my son was a year behind in his speech and with a bit of extra work at home he was at an age appropriate level only 6 months later when we went back for a review.

If she understands what is being said to her it is unlikely she is behind too much in her IQ. I dont think many kids under 3 would be dressing themselves tbh.

MrPudding

My little fella was late to talk. Compared with his big sister he was very late with talking. We had his hearing checked as we were worried about that.

In the end it all panned out. Over the last 8 to 10 months he has come on amazingly, speaking English and French. He was just a bit slow.

MrP

Khannie

Trinity1 wrote:

If she understands what is being said to her it is unlikely she is behind too much in her IQ. I dont think many kids under 3 would be dressing themselves tbh.

Exactly.

eimearnll

tell her not to worry these people just love to see ya panic i think,my daughter is 3 in april and she is only starting to talk in the last few months my son on the other hand could talk to the ears of ya at 11 months dont stress all kids are different

You said she was living abroad, is the kid being brought up with 2 or more languages? It's common for bilingual kids to be slower to start talking.

scrattletrap

I would say get her ears checked, my son wasn't talking at that stage, but it was because he was partially deaf, once that was found out he came on leaps and bounds. (he couldn't say his own name until he was four)

OTK

My kid wasn't speaking much at two/three but now he never stops. We had his hearing checked. No problem. Now he never stops talking.

Some of my friends wanted me to get him private speech therapy which is amazingly expensive. I'm glad I didn't. One thing the speech therapist told me for free was not to ask him questions with a yes/no answer which he can nod his head at, but instead to phrase questions as choices. Do you want to play with superman or spiderman?

When you're a parent you dread hearing the words 'your child is not developing correctly'. I wouldn't worry if my next kid didn't speak until three. I think my kid learnt a lot of words from playing with other children in the creche, which he started at three.