Talking Problem

mmalaka

Looking for advice about my daughter, she will be 3 years in December. until today she did not speak almost nothing, just few word from time to time. i.e. really really few words. like one word before 5 month, another word before 1 month. she can hear us very well, she understand us like when we ask her to open door close TV. Build a Lego house....etc she understand all of this. she was our only child until we got a new boy before 2 months. we used to speak our home country language at home. Then we got advice that we need to speak more English and we did that. she understand both languages. She joined a play school for a month now... some time she make sounds as talking but not a real words or at least this is what we think. when she want something she point to it and shout on us...we are using books with pictures with her now...we noticed that her response to other people (other than me or her Mom) is faster regarding this talking issue. like before one month she replied to my friend by saying 'yes' when he called her name. she repeated this many times it was amazing she never did this with us

Any advice??

High&Low

Your public health nurse should be able to provide you with some advice and point you in the direction of a speech therapist if necessary

Sleepy

Have you talked to her about why mammy and daddy speak two different languages? She might be confused by the difference and not know which one to use herself when talking?

mmalaka

High&Low wrote: »

Your public health nurse should be able to provide you with some advice and point you in the direction of a speech therapist if necessary

the public health nurse saw her and she said it seems it is just matter of time... she will speak when she ready.... she adviced us about books and stories... she adviced us also to not allow her to spend a lot of time watching TV and movies (shrek, dora, ...etc)

mmalaka

Sleepy wrote: »

Have you talked to her about why mammy and daddy speak two different languages? She might be confused by the difference and not know which one to use herself when talking?

we started to talk with her in english also... and she understand both languahes

I am not sure how I can explain this to her she is still 3 years old

Lizzykins

I was a slow talker and I've been told I was nearly 3 before I spoke. My parents were very quiet and didn't speak much to me I believe. After spending two weeks with my grandmother I couldn't be shut up!

My advice is to talk as much as you can to your daughter. The public health nurses are usually good for spotting problems and if they're not worried about your daughter's progress then that's a start. If her hearing is ok as you've said and her understanding then just let nature take it's course. Playschool is good too for kids of that age.

Try not to worry. You're doing all you can I think.Good luck!

crosstownk

I've heard that if two languages are introduced at once that it can slow the child down initially. They also have a tendency to confuse words from each language. But this is only temporary and should level out. A friend of mine's wife is Spanish and he speaks English to his daughter while mammy speaks Spanish. The girl was slow about talking but she eventually caught up and well before school started. Now she speaks both fluently - so well worth it.

It'd be no harm to talk to the district nurse if you're concerned - just to get professional advice.

raemie21

If she only has a few words and will be 3 in December, then she is experiencing a significant language delay and I'd recommend a speech/language assessment as soon as you can. It's encouraging that she seems to be following what you are saying to her and perhaps her it is affecting her expressive language only. However, early identification and advice are absolutely important for a variety of developmental delays. She may indeed be a 'late talker' but from what you've decribed, I'd definitely recommend you pursue this before she becomes frustrated and it escalates into emotional/behavioural difficulties.

Advice re bilingualism - Research continues to show that exposing a child to two or more languages from a young age is a fantastic advantage for both language and cognitive development. No need to worry about that at all although for children with difficulties in their first language, it is best to keep a consistent pattern to how they are exposed to the languages e.g. speak one at home, one at school in order to faciliate their development.

John Mason

All children develop at different rates, your child might be more advanced in, i dont know colouring or something then other kids of her age.

You should speak to the District Health Nurse but usually they wont do anything until she is 3.5 years old. You could put her into a playgroup where she will have not option but learn to communciate. if she is able to communicate at home with yourself and your husband you might be indirectly facilitating her in forming words correctly. i have direct experience of this

I would get her in a playgroup and see how you go from there

lostinnappies

All children are different, but my advice is to speak to your public health nurse and get her to refere you to a speech therapist or psychologist. There is no harm in checking.

Also be on the look out for other symptoms. My niece was diagnosed with dispraxia. Look at her balance, if she is clumsy or unsteady. If she has a good grasp of fine motor controls. Does she blow through her nose or mouth instead of saying a word.

Again im not an expert but even if an expert can give you the reassurance that everything is ok then its well worth the visit. If you go public then you maybe waiting for up to a year for this appointment

mmalaka

Thanks for all of ur replies..

The public health nurse checked her and she said it is just a matter of time and she looks healthy. her balance is ok... she understand me and my wife...she understand English and our language...

the interesting thing about this is that she seems to response and talk to other more than us...as I said before most of her few words was as a response to other people sometime we feel that she just do not want to speak with us when we repeat some words to her she look to us smiling as she is saying "I know this word but I do not want to say it" ...she joined a play school for a month now ....

Nevyn

It could be that she doesn't feel the need to communicate verbally with you if you are doing the talking for her or she feels that her needs are being met.

I know both of mine had to be encouraged to use thier words, they would gesture or communitcate or wait for me to ask what they wanted and make suggestions while they nodded or shook their heads until I said that they had to use thier words and "Ask".

tallaght01

why don't you just bring her to your GP and get a proper general check up?

mmalaka

Thaedydal wrote: »

It could be that she doesn't feel the need to communicate verbally with you if you are doing the talking for her or she feels that her needs are being met.

I know both of mine had to be encouraged to use thier words, they would gesture or communitcate or wait for me to ask what they wanted and make suggestions while they nodded or shook their heads until I said that they had to use thier words and "Ask".

I think this is the case with my child.... I think we will start to encourage her to use the word by acting that we do not know what she is pointing to or what she want

mmalaka

tallaght01 wrote: »

why don't you just bring her to your GP and get a proper general check up?

The public health nurse saw her last week, and I just remembered that our GP saw her ling time ago....

raemie21

pink fluffy bunny wrote: »

You should speak to the District Health Nurse but usually they wont do anything until she is 3.5 years old.

There is a lot of advice on this thread and ways that we can interpret your child's communication based on our own experiences - the best step is obviously to seek a professional opinion yourself - speech and language therapist can advise you if there is a difficulty, if it's fine, suggest a few changes at home and/or another opinion etc etc.

However, I would strongly recommend that you do this asap. Children can be referred to public services from at least aged two years and cetainly if the staff resources are there, are seen from aged two. A private therapist will see children even younger than that. Really, best not to wait until she reaches 3.5 or 4 due to your significant concerns - I don't mean to sound doom and gloom but there are a lot of children who present aged 5/6 with developmental problems when it's clear that they would have benefited from earlier intervention and it would have been more effective back then than now.
Best of luck.

galwaydude

I highly recommend the above advice. The quicker you get the child to a speech therepist the easier it will become. Where are you based as my wife has alot of contacts in that field. There is alot of exercises that you and your child can do to stimulate speech and make it easier.

tallaght01

mmalaka wrote: »

The public health nurse saw her last week, and I just remembered that our GP saw her ling time ago....

Your public health nurse isn't trained to examine a child for causes of speech delay. And if you saw your GP a long time ago, it may not have been for speech delay. So, your kiddy may not have been examined for conditions that cause it.

Don't muck about with a kid above the age of 2 who has speech delay. It may be nothing, but as someone said previously lots of kids present way too late.

It could well be nothing, but you only get one shot at this.

Carrigart Exile

OP I had a very similar experience with my own daughter. We approached our Education Authority who brought in language therapy services and had our daughter fully assessed by educational psychologist services. What horrified us during this time was how quickly 'the Community Autism Team' wanted to label her autistic. At the end of the full assessment she was diagnosed as needing assistance developing her language; we also had it confirmed she was not autistic. She is now 7 and her language is developing at pace and she is keeping up with her school work as normal. In fact, shutting her up is now our main problem.

luckat

Raemi21's advice is good, mmalaka. Look for that language assessment.

No matter how good your community health nurse and GP are at their jobs, they are not specialists. She needs to be assessed by specialists to make sure that there is no problem.

Please do this as soon as possible.

That said, two of my friends didn't talk until they were over five years of age. Not a word. Not a dicky-bird. One came from a bilingual family (Irish and English both spoken at home); one didn't.

One went on to become a solicitor, fluently representing clients. The other became one of the best-known and most fluent journalists in the country.

So it's not *necessarily* anything to worry about - but speech and language specialists will certainly help to rule out any underlying problem.

tallaght01

I would add, luckat, that it's a bad move to go straight to a speech pathologist for speech delay.

The most sensible route is to go to a GP, who can look for medical conditions that can cause speech delay (or, more commonly, reassure the parents). Then, if the doc thinks this is purely a problem with speech, then the referral is made to a speech pathologist.

A speech therapist won't be able to rule out many of the causes of speech delay.

undecided

OP I would follow tallaghto1 advice.

My little boy had speech delay never made sound or anything saw public health nurse regularly had hearing checked etc. Turned out when he spoke he spoke perfectly BUT the health nurse missed all the other signs of autism. should I have known of the condition I would have known he had it as it was obvious but she missed it! PLEASE NOTE IM NOT SUGGESTING THIS IS YOUR CHILDS PROBLEM!!

Get your child assessed to make sure speech is the only problem and if it is get some speech therapy the only thing it can do is benifit him/her

lol and when the child starts talking wonder when is he/she going to be quiet!:D

raemie21

tallaght01 wrote: »

A speech therapist won't be able to rule out many of the causes of speech delay.

??
That's a very ignorant comment.
They would be in a far better position than a GP and rightly so, since it's their specific area of expertise.

tallaght01

raemie21 wrote: »

??
That's a very ignorant comment.
They would be in a far better position than a GP and rightly so, since it's their specific area of expertise.

It's not an ignorant comment.

Causes of speech delay are very broad. Speech therapists are good at looking at conditions that are purely disorders of speech. But, for example, if an all round subtle developmental delay was the cause they wouldn't be in a position to judge. Or, like someone above mentioned, a speechie wouldn't be in a position to asess for autism, or poor hearing.

The way it usually works is that the speech therapist will usually get involved once we have an idea as to why the speech is delayed. They're very good at what they do, but their role is generally not a diagnostic one.

pgroarke

I disagree with some of the comments posted.

Firstly understanding is far important than speech.
That is great that she understands (both languages) it means she has no intellectual problems.
In fact 2 of the greatest minds of the last century were late talkers - Einstein and Feynmann.
Neither spoke until they were 3, so perhaps you have a potential physicist on your hands ?!?!

Regarding bilingual the standard advice is that one should speak ones mother tongue with the child.
That is important for the childs grammar.
That was a crucial error that many mexican mothers made in the US.
They tried to speak poor English instead of Spanish to their kids.
The result was offspring that are unfortunately incapable of grammar in any tongue.

My own daughter is being raised bilingually. I speak exclusively English my wife Swedish.
By age 12 months she had over a dozen words in both languages. Now at 15 months she has more words than we can count in both languages.
But it doesnt mean anything.
There are certain types of intellectual tasks that your child will do better from having 2 languages.

lostinnappies

raemie21 wrote: »

??
That's a very ignorant comment.
They would be in a far better position than a GP and rightly so, since it's their specific area of expertise.

Speech delay is caused not only by physical but also psychological aspects. A speech thearpist is not a doctor or a psychologist, nor are they a speech thearist. There is nothing ignorant about this comment, often it is a combined examination which reviels the real cause behind delay speech.

raemie21

tallaght01 wrote: »

It's not an ignorant comment.

Causes of speech delay are very broad. Speech therapists are good at looking at conditions that are purely disorders of speech. But, for example, if an all round subtle developmental delay was the cause they wouldn't be in a position to judge. Or, like someone above mentioned, a speechie wouldn't be in a position to asess for autism, or poor hearing.

The way it usually works is that the speech therapist will usually get involved once we have an idea as to why the speech is delayed. They're very good at what they do, but their role is generally not a diagnostic one.

I'm well aware that there are a number of causes for speech and language delay.
If by 'pure disorders' you are referring to a child presenting with a speech or language difficulty in the absence of any physical, environmental, psychological or cognitive deficit, then there are NO causes or reasons for it (by it's definition - if someone was to discover a reason 'why', they'd be heading for academic glory..)
A speech and language therapist is one of the main professionals on a multidisciplinary team for autism or any emotional/behavioural difficulties. I assure you that they are very well positioned to advise re communication difficulty and more than 'pure disorders of speech'.
You advised the OP that 'the more sensible route' would be to vist a GP first - That is was I was labelling as ignorant. No matter what service a child would take in the future, I guarantee that an SLT assesment report would be a hundred times more useful than a bland GP note referring for 'poor speech'. Plus, GPs often reassure parents to wait a bit longer or check the child's hearing. And also, a referral to the HSE services can come from parents so it seems that there would be absolutely no benefit to see a GP.
I take the point that a child would need to see a specialist team if they were presenting with general developmental delay but again, why would you recommend a parent delay a SLT assessment before this? SLT can of course aid in diagnostic work and again, if a child was to attend a developmental team in Tallaght, the Consultant would have more information, more assessment and more reports to aid the overall assessment than if he/she was going purely on their own assessment.

raemie21

lostinnappies wrote: »

Speech delay is caused not only by physical but also psychological aspects. A speech thearpist is not a doctor or a psychologist, nor are they a speech thearist. There is nothing ignorant about this comment, often it is a combined examination which reviels the real cause behind delay speech.

Yes I know that there are a number of causes for speech and language delay and indeed no apparent reason at times.
Unfortunately, I think SLT and many other allied health disciplines are poorly understood by the public (I'm not on my high horse by the way, I've just had a lot of exposure through work).
It is an ignorant comment (and I mean mis-informed) - the idea of telling a parent that the sensible thing to do is to visit the GP rather than an SLT and inferring that a GP would be in a better position to advise a parent re future intervention.
If the OP would like a GP AND SLT assessment, that's fine but I can't understand why Tallaght01 would advise her to go to GP only and label a direct SLT assessment a 'bad move' - will just end up avoiding/delaying the overall process even further for the parent and child.

tallaght01

It's not an ignorant comment, and it's certainly not misinformed.

The process of getting to the root of a speech delay is as follows (and when I use scary medical terms, I just want to point out that I'm not saying I think the OPs kid has any of these conditins, I'm just talking about the general process as it happens in most healthcare settings).

So, you notice your kid isn't speaking by 2, and you go to your GP. Your GP knows most of these kids will have absooutely nothing wrong with them, but he/she wants to check for certain problems.

The GP will start with the basics, he'll want to weigh the child, and look at the child's other physical milestones....how is her hearing, vision, fine and gross motor skills, does she walk? how is her gait etc.

The above are things that can point to speech delay just being the first manifestation of a generalised global developmental delay.

Then the GP will do a closer examination.....looking for signs of genetic problems, for example low set ears, single palmar creases, unusual nasal bridges. All very subtle signs that a GP will spot in a matter of seconds.

Then he'll need to examine the heart...is there a murmur? Lots of developmental delay that's associated with slow speech are associated with cardiac problems.

Most commonly, the GP can't find a cause, and makes a referral to a speech therapist at the same time as making a referral to a paediatric clinic.

If the GP does find something concerning he can make an urgent referral to the paediatric clinic. He can also refer the kiddy for a cardiac echo, or genetic screening at the same time.

This is why it's important to go to a generalist in the first instance. That way you have someone to co-ordinate the overall care from the start.

A speechie won't listen to your heart, or look for dysmorphic features. You don't get plotted on a growth chart in most speechie clinics, and most won't measure a head circumference.

That's not me having a go at speechies. But they're not doctors.

So, take the scenario......your child has a mild cerebral palsy that you were never aware of, and speech was the first manifestation of that. So, you go directly to a speech therapist. He/she is unlikely to diagnose cerebral palsy,and is unlikely to make huge progress without knowing the underlying diagnosis.

Your GP is likely to notice the increased tone in your child's left leg. He can refer for an MRI while waiting for the paediatricians appointment, aswell as getting the ball rolling with speech therapy and physio.

It's not always how it happens, but most GPs are very good with this type of thing, as it's relatively common. But that's how it should work. And that's how it works most of the time.

You most definitely don't waste any significant time by seeing your GP before the speechie. You can get an appt to see a GP within 2 days of wanting one, and he can refer to a speechie there and then.

Dfens

Yes, while I would sincerely hope that this is the procedure that ALL GP's in Ireland would follow in coming to a diagnosis as to the cause of a speech developmental delay, I wonder how true to the 'norm' it really is?

littlebug

Dfens wrote: »

Yes, while I would sincerely hope that this is the procedure that ALL GP's in Ireland would follow in coming to a diagnosis as to the cause of a speech developmental delay, I wonder how true to the 'norm' it really is?

Good point Dfens.

There's also the fact that many mothers would assume that the public health nurse is the best route to take but that all depends on how thorough the phn is. Plus if the child isn't actually sick they're not going to fork out money for a GP visit. If parents are constantly being told by lay people.. "oh so and so didn't talk til he was 4 and he's fine now" etc etc how likely are they to go to the GP about it. If at one of the regular developmental checks it's written off because the child's hearing seems ok and their comprehension ok then again how likely are they to go to the GP? There are a lot of barriers there really.