30 months without any words

clint_silver

Shes 2 and half. not one word, not even mam or dad.
3 older siblings. house is noisy, so is she. Points and communicates perfectly, laughs, plays, is intelligent, just no words.
We read to her, do flash cards, all the things that worked on the others aint working here.
development nurse is saying speech therapy but theres an 8 month waiting list (how does that happen?) unless we pay for private.

any tips/similar experiences?

bp

I am no expert but my sil went through something similar with 3rd child. In this case this child a) couldn't get a word in :-) and b) just didn't need to - the siblings just got things for them so no need to talk!

This may have been a unique case but just wanted to share

mapaca

Could it be a problem with her hearing? Similar situation with my nephew - turned out he had waxy build up in his ears which meant he couldn't hear properly. Once he got it treated he came on in leaps and bounds.

Moonbeam

I am surprised the PHN has not had him referred already.
Has he had a hearing test?
My 30 month old has a very wide vocabulary but sometimes leaves out the start out of some words so rack means track.
He is the 3rd child in our house and our PHN refered him a few months ago,I think she refers most people though due to the waiting lists.
I don't think that he needs it though.
My 15 month old(4th child) has about 20 consistent words

8 months waiting list is a lot shorter then Dublin or North Kildare.

January

There's a 2 year waiting list for speech therapy in Dublin so get yourself on that list ASAP.

Get referral to audiologist from PHN and get hearing tested.

clint_silver

mapaca wrote: »

Could it be a problem with her hearing? Similar situation with my nephew - turned out he had waxy build up in his ears which meant he couldn't hear properly. Once he got it treated he came on in leaps and bounds.

We dont think its a hearing problem, she responds to everything without us having to raise voice, interacts when reading books and in playtime so we know she understands everything.

the 3 older sisters were all chattering away by then, all had various idiosynchrasies with words that were corrected over time.

RentDayBlues

My niece was the exact same, no words, had 3 older siblings, the one closest in age spoke for her! She was 39 months, her sister started school, and she just started talking. She had all the words, just obviously never felt the need to use them

Akrasia

You should definitely get her hearing properly checked. Kids who have impaired hearing or eyesight don't know that they're impaired, it's normal for them, so they'll develop coping mechanisms and use proxy information to supplement their visual or aural information

Your child might be responding to sounds but hearing them as distorted or muffled or she might be missing certain ranges of sounds that are important in speech.

If your child is experiencing hearing difficulties the earlier it's identified, the better.

Wright

bp wrote: »

I am no expert but my sil went through something similar with 3rd child. In this case this child a) couldn't get a word in :-) and b) just didn't need to - the siblings just got things for them so no need to talk!

This may have been a unique case but just wanted to share

I was like this but with walking. Wasn't bothered getting off my arse.

serute

My child didn't talk until a month after her 3rd birthday. She started speech therapy at two and a half, but I don't think it made much difference. We tried everything to get her to talk but she showed no interest in any of it until she was ready herself. When she did start to talk, she started with just the odd word now and again but her vocabulary built up fairly quickly. She's 3 and a half now and loves talking and singing. She's still behind other children her age in terms of speech but seems to be catching up.

unkel

There are a lot of parents needlessly worrying about this. Don't worry you lot

All kids are different and they all start talking in different ways and at different ages. In the case of the OP I guess bp had a good point. Later sibling, no need to talk, etc. I've seen it close up myself. Small kids are lazy and are masters at getting away with stuff. Relax, your little girl will be fine!

Akrasia

unkel wrote: »

There are a lot of parents needlessly worrying about this. Don't worry you lot

All kids are different and they all start talking in different ways and at different ages. In the case of the OP I guess bp had a good point. Later sibling, no need to talk, etc. I've seen it close up myself. Small kids are lazy and are masters at getting away with stuff. Relax, your little girl will be fine!

I'm not sure if this is good advice. Just because many children who have late speech development catch up later on, doesn't mean that there might not be an underlying reason why this particular child is delayed. 2 and a half is late to not have any words at all.

I have a 2 and a half year old daughter and she never shuts up, she sings, she tells stories, she asks questions, she tells jokes, she reads books to us etc

Delayed speech can have many different causes and the quicker they are assessed and if necessary treated, the better the outcomes there will be for the child.
You can get a good list of specialist speech and language therapists below

http://isti.ie/index.php?id=4
A quick consultation would be no harm at all even if only to re-assure you that your child is fine

anncoates

Did the PHN not refer her already?

One of our sons had very delayed - and eventually garbled - speech and it actually did turn out to be a underlying speech difficulty, which thankfully has been mostly resolved with speech therapy.

Of course, as people have said, even if it's probably nothing to worry about, but you should still organize a hearing test (the Beacon do an good one) and go on the list for speech therapy now. We left it longer to address this with our son and ended up having to go private. That said, the waiting list was about 18 months for us where we are in Dublin.