hi,
i have a 25mth old refluxer.i am interested to know how having reflux actually causes speech delay.
ryan says many words and learns new ones daily but he only seems to say the beginning of the words. "ba " can mean bone, biscuit , bath , boat.
"da" is dad "mu" is mum "na" is nana. as he's learning new words it's getting harder to work out what he is meaning.he gets a little frustrated and shows you and also uses a lot of hand gestures, so we do get by. i am a little concerned that he will get frustrated and go into a shell and just use hand signals. we have spoken to our health visitor who is going to assess him tomorrow and see if he needs evaluating at a speech therapist. we have been told he could just be a late talker and this is how kids start to talk. has anyone else had this experience,will he start to get clearer. sometimes he repeats the word over and looks at us as if we are silly because he believes he's clear. we do repeat the word after him correctly and also we don't think there is anything wrong with his hearing as he can follow orders and even hear whispering. if you are the other end of the room an open a packet he's there like a flash.

My 3 1/2 yo. does the exact same thing b/c of his sensory disorder. You may want to start by going through the sensory checklist at www.sensory-processing-disorder.com/sensory-processing-disorder-checklist.html . What's working for us some of the time is to treat words like truck as a 2-syllable word and to clap it out (tru-ck) so that he can hear the difference. You may also want to have a hearing test done to rule that out.

hi,
thanks for that link. it's taken a while to find the time to read throught it. there are a few things on the list that i could say yes to but i think most of them are general baby things. i'm not too concerned that he has this disorder.
just wondering how you're son gets on in school with his speech delay.this is one of my main concerns with ryan.he is due to start nursey in may 2.5 hours 5 days a week.then when he is you're sons age he will go to school for 2.5 hours. if his speech has not improved i'm concerned he won't be able to communicate properly.by 4 yrs old he will be in school 9am till 3pm, i know this a long way off yet but nursery seems so close.plus living where we are he will be learning a second language also in nursery!!
our health visitor has refered him to a speech therapist for an evaluation but if we have missed the next session starting beginning of feb we could be waiting 3 mths.

Shae-Lynne's speech was very delayed and Roni taught her sign language to communicate, which really helped. Then once she started to talk, there was just no stopping her and now she never shuts up! Seemed like one day she wasn't talking and then all of sudden the next she started. We were discussing this in another post. I think kids all do things at their own pace.

Yes, many of those things can be common in infants, but generally not so common at ages 2 years plus, maybe even less common by 18 months.

Evan's doing okay in pre-school. He uses a combo. of signs, gestures, sounds and words to communicate.

Let us know how Ryan's speech evaluation goes.

Here is another link I think you should check out as it was used by a speech therapist to assess my son who was then around 22 months of age. He is speech delayed and I should probably post the results we just received for Iain.

http://www.infantrefluxdisease.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7697


I have two speech and language delayed children. Oddly, my middle son is off the charts completely gifted with speech and language and he was my champion puker. It has no rhyme nor reason.

THe important thing is to have him screened. It is not unusual for him to still use a similar sound for a few things, but can you list what words he does say? I do not mean full words as "ba" and "da" etc do count as words still for screening purposes.

Iain will be formally assessed on Feb. 27th and then we wait to start the next block for treatment.

Coming from a Mom who has waited with my eldest one I highly suggest that you become very proactive and get him treated now. Late talker or not if your screening assessment says he needs help get it now as children learn by leaps and bounds and you can make up a lot of lost time for a severe delay by the time he reaches school. Do not wait.

Thanks Leigh, I did not see the original post. That is awesome, I will print out, read and save.

Jean