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LucyD
December 10th 03, 09:57 PM
Hi folks

I wonder if anyone can give me some advice. I am writing on behalf of
a friend who has a son that has not yet started to say any words at
2.5yrs. As I understand it he is being tested for hearing
difficulties, but she says he does hear music etc from the TV as he
dances to it. He also leads his mum by the hand and indicates what he
wants when he wants something. He doesn't say mama or dada, but he
makes some babbling sounds. She is very concerned about it and does
not yet have access to the internet. My own daughter, amost 2 is
talking in fairly complex sentences and had the benefit of baby
signing from around 10mths until she stopped at around 20mths when the
words were taking over from the signs. I have recommended that she try
signing - has anyone used it for speech delay in an older child, or
does anyone have any other advice regarding the problem? Thanks a lot,
Lucy.

Penny Gaines
December 11th 03, 03:47 AM
LucyD wrote in >:

> Hi folks
>
> I wonder if anyone can give me some advice. I am writing on behalf of
> a friend who has a son that has not yet started to say any words at
> 2.5yrs. As I understand it he is being tested for hearing
> difficulties, but she says he does hear music etc from the TV as he
> dances to it. He also leads his mum by the hand and indicates what he
> wants when he wants something. He doesn't say mama or dada, but he
> makes some babbling sounds. She is very concerned about it and does
> not yet have access to the internet. My own daughter, amost 2 is
> talking in fairly complex sentences and had the benefit of baby
> signing from around 10mths until she stopped at around 20mths when the
> words were taking over from the signs. I have recommended that she try
> signing - has anyone used it for speech delay in an older child, or
> does anyone have any other advice regarding the problem? Thanks a lot,
> Lucy.

Firstly, has he seen a speech therapist?

Secondly, when my kid saw a speech therapist at about that age, I was
told that signing is good for children with a speech delay, because
it accesses the language centres of the brain.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

Peggy Tatyana
December 11th 03, 11:55 AM
"LucyD" > wrote:

> Hi folks
>
> I wonder if anyone can give me some advice. I am writing on behalf of
> a friend who has a son that has not yet started to say any words at
> 2.5yrs. As I understand it he is being tested for hearing
> difficulties, but she says he does hear music etc from the TV as he
> dances to it. He also leads his mum by the hand and indicates what he
> wants when he wants something. He doesn't say mama or dada, but he
> makes some babbling sounds. She is very concerned about it and does
> not yet have access to the internet. My own daughter, amost 2 is
> talking in fairly complex sentences and had the benefit of baby
> signing from around 10mths until she stopped at around 20mths when the
> words were taking over from the signs. I have recommended that she try
> signing - has anyone used it for speech delay in an older child, or
> does anyone have any other advice regarding the problem? Thanks a lot,

My daughter, who had not started talking at 2 1/2, was diagnosed by her
speech therapist as having "verbal apraxia" -- a neurological disorder which
causes difficulty in connecting sounds to meanings. She did a lot of
signing, which she made up herself, and she could repeat sounds as long as
they were just sounds, but not say words. For instance, she could repeat the
syllable "ma" after me, but if I asked her to to say "mama" she would cry.

One thing the speech therapist encouraged us to do was to accept (and
demand) speech when she wanted things -- even if it was only to say "mmm"
when she wanted milk, for instance. Fortunately, she "got it" pretty quickly
after we started encouraging more oral communication, and was speaking in
complex sentences within a couple months of beginning therapy. It seems to
be the case, though, that the sooner this is caught, the better. If it goes
on for too long, it becomes very difficult for the child to acquire speaking
skills.

Peggy

Christopher Biow
December 11th 03, 01:23 PM
(LucyD) wrote:

>I wonder if anyone can give me some advice. I am writing on behalf of
>a friend who has a son that has not yet started to say any words at
>2.5yrs. As I understand it he is being tested for hearing
>difficulties, but she says he does hear music etc from the TV as he
>dances to it.

How is his *receptive* vocabulary? Responding to speech by others is much
more indicative than expressive vocabulary, especially for hearing. While a
2.5 YO may say nothing or a lot, he should have a receptive vocabulary of
at least dozens of distinct words.

This is what parents should be looking for first. If a child misses any of
the milestones at <http://www.affoto.com/infanthearingtesting.html> (e.g.
turning head to a bell by 6 months, responding when called by 9 months),
get a hearing test immediately. It may be nothing, but delaying the test
can set the child up for much more extensive interventions later and
permanent language deficits. Again, it is the receptive milestones that are
worth the most attention; expressive milestones vary much more among
children.

As with other developmental milestones, extremes in parental attitude are
to be avoided. Parents should not be sweating or even comparing the exact
month that a baby makes a milestone--the child does not benefit from the
inevitable pressure. But ignoring missed milestones (the 95th percentile
ones) is worse, most particularly for hearing. One missed milestone may
only only mean "wait and see" (after all, 5% of normal children will miss
any given 95% milestone). But multiple missed milestones in the same
functional area are always worth investigation. For hearing, you should
test after even one missed 95th percentile milestone.

Parents may have to force the hand of an apathetic pediatrician. Don't let
a doctor dismiss missed milestones with a wave of the hand toward his
"clinical experience" (which for a variety of reasons is of little value
concerning developmental delays). Remember also that most pediatricians are
not developmental specialists or diagnosticians--they are responsible for
screening and referring possible problems to the specialists. A good friend
let her pediatrician lull her into a sense of security when her son showed
moderate delays across a variety of milestones during infancy and
throughout. It wasn't until his teenage years that she finally insisted on
thorough testing, which revealed that he had severe sleep apnea. He had
literally never slept for more than 60 seconds at a time. With a pressure
breathing device, his entire character and aptitude suddenly turned around.
But nothing could make up for ten lost years of sleep, oxygen, and
learning.

In his book _First Three Years of Life_, developmental psychologist Burton
White has an excellent section on hearing and language development, with
emphasis on early testing and (if indicated) intervention for any problem.

Robyn Kozierok
December 11th 03, 06:03 PM
>> not yet have access to the internet. My own daughter, amost 2 is
>> talking in fairly complex sentences and had the benefit of baby
>> signing from around 10mths until she stopped at around 20mths when the
>> words were taking over from the signs. I have recommended that she try
>> signing - has anyone used it for speech delay in an older child, or
>> does anyone have any other advice regarding the problem? Thanks a lot,

Just a quick note on the baby signs idea -- it may not work for
everyone. I tried doing the baby signs with my youngest and it just
never clicked for him. He did not like imitating gestures any more
than he liked imitating speech sounds or playing "nursery games" (
such as "so big", "patty cake", "where's your nose" etc.)
He did begin learning words by 18 months, but prior to that time,
exposure to the baby signs did not help. (He's now caught up in his
language ability.)

So, whether or not baby signs will help a child with an expressive
language delay probably depends on what the root of the delay is.

--Robyn (mommy to Ryan 9/93 and Matthew 6/96 and Evan 3/01)

LucyD
December 11th 03, 07:44 PM
Thanks to all for your great responses and good advice. I think he's
been recommended to see a therapist, but his mum was not sure if this
was what would be best.

> How is his *receptive* vocabulary? Responding to speech by others is much
> more indicative than expressive vocabulary, especially for hearing. While a
> 2.5 YO may say nothing or a lot, he should have a receptive vocabulary of
> at least dozens of distinct words.

I think he does respond to verbal commands etc - I am not 100% sure
but I think his mum said when she asks him something he leads her to a
relevant thing.

I will let her know about what you have all said.

Thanks again,

Lucy

H Schinske
December 11th 03, 08:59 PM
wrote:

>Thanks to all for your great responses and good advice. I think he's
>been recommended to see a therapist, but his mum was not sure if this
>was what would be best.

My son quite enjoyed being evaluated, and I found the process interesting to
watch as well. I would not worry about there being *any* downside to an
evaluation -- good speech therapists know how to make it fun for the child.

He didn't need therapy, as it happened, but given what I saw of the way this
speech pathologist worked with him, I am sure he would have enjoyed it if it
had been necessary.

--Helen

Kevin Karplus
December 12th 03, 02:31 PM
In article >, H Schinske wrote:
> wrote:
>
>>Thanks to all for your great responses and good advice. I think he's
>>been recommended to see a therapist, but his mum was not sure if this
>>was what would be best.
>
> My son quite enjoyed being evaluated, and I found the process interesting to
> watch as well. I would not worry about there being *any* downside to an
> evaluation -- good speech therapists know how to make it fun for the child.
>
> He didn't need therapy, as it happened, but given what I saw of the way this
> speech pathologist worked with him, I am sure he would have enjoyed it if it
> had been necessary.

My son had a hearing test by an audiologist and evaluation by a speech
therapist when he was about 2.5 years old. Both evaluations were fun
for him, because they were presented as games to play.

His hearing was fine, but he did need speech therapy. He has a very
regular but idiosyncratic phonemic system, which my wife and I could
decode (sometimes with great difficulty and with lots of feedback,
giving him possible decodings of his speech for him to agree with or
disagree with), but which no one else could. Part of his phonemic
system was to reduce all words to one open syllable---he also had only
about half the normal consonants. (Tamarind soda, a rare treat, was
"ta ho".)

Since we were trying to get free speech therapy from the school
district, he was evaluated in our home by an assessment team. It
looked for a while like they were going to say that he didn't need
therapy, since he was recognizably saying "ba" for "ball" and most of
their other one-syllable test words were similarly decodable. What
convinced them (we believe) that his articulation was causing him
problems communicating is when he spontaneously produced a sentence
which they could not understand at all, but which we recognized as
"tell me about the Wizard of Oz himself". I can't reproduce his
phonemic system exactly any more but this was something like "teh mee
aba teh wi a a hi heh".

A year of speech therapy made him enormously more understandable to
his daycare workers, and he enjoyed the sessions. (At 7.5 now, he is
again getting some speech therapy at school, but only for a minor
problem with lateralizing sibilants--he has no problem communicating.)

--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

FibbersCloset
December 13th 03, 03:52 AM
This drink may be related to what our cats drank, according to DD at one
time, "Titty wow." ;-)

Dena

"Kevin Karplus" > wrote in message
...
(Tamarind soda, a rare treat, was
> "ta ho".)
>