2 Year Old & Speech Therapist

I've mentioned in passing on here that my 2 year old doesn't talk.  He has about 5 words that he says and that's it.  He does not put two words together.  Apparently "uh oh" doesn't count.   He had his 2 year check up this morning so I talked with his provider about it and she's going to give him a referral for speech therapy and to get his hearing checked just in case.  I don't think he has a hearing problem, but just to be safe.  Anyway, if anyone could just give me a good idea on what to expect speech therapy to be like at this age, or if he'll be evaluated first and then go from there.  I've never done this before! 
 
As always, thanks in advance.

 

He will be evaluated and then you will go from there. My boys had speech as infants and then Anthony qualified again at 3.5 years old.

As he is under three, the whole EI team will come out and evaluate in all areas. Then they wil meet and give their recommendations for services. It really is a relatively smooth process. And the EI group we went through also had a playgroup so I could bring boys there once a week as well.

Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

 

One of my boys had speech for about 5 months around age 2.  We went through early intervention (per the doctor) so it was free and in the home.  The first time several people came out to "evaluate" him.  Basically they just sit around and watched him play.  They asked me questions etc.  They have a form to complete checking off skills they see.   He qualified for speech.  The therapist came to our house.  At first it was 2x a week and then 1x a week.  She mainly just played with him and coached me on how to help him.  Most of the real work is done by you at home daily.  Within 5 months he went from lagging to several months ahead in speech.

 

You will have a lot of forms to fill out.  Did the child hit all other milestones?  At what age was the first word?  Does he have 10 toes?  Hehe.. you get the picture.  The child will be evaluated by the therapist/pathologist.  Try to remain a quiet observer and let the tester test.  (That was the hardest thing for my dh.  He wanted to answer the therapist's questions or explain.) 
 
Therapy will just seem like playing to you.  The therapist/pathologist will engage your son in activities that make learning fun.  Our therapist brought musical tapes and played games with blocks.  It was great!
 
Your son is right in line with what my twins did at age two.  Think of this as 1:1 special attention that your son is getting.  It is not bad.  It is early and pretty soon he'll test out of it and you can't find a way to stop him from jabbering your ear off!  All three of my kids have been through speech therapy and you'd never really know. 

 

We had the boys hearing and speech done at about the same age. It was quick and painless. They assessed them . Once they established there was no hearing or cognitive difficulties, just late to talking, they gave us a bunch of strategies to encourage speech and follow up was optional. Months later they had a vocabulary explosion, and now they are probably on par with most kids their age.
 
Now they're in speech again to help out with their sounds and tone, and it has helped them a lot. They get half an hour a week at their daycare. Miles' pronunciation is probably going to take some more time, Austin is pretty clear already. But on the whole it's good for them.

 

Just to add a note.  My son had a worse vocabulary than my daughter but at some point in a year or so, he surpassed my daughter.  My son did get his hearing tested and it did test normal.  I've helped out with hearing tests at the grade school level and it is amazing how much hearing/speech contribute to misbehaving.  I think there is a direct correlation.  Good to get those things check out now.  There is definitely a correlation with sight and behavior.

 

Thanks for all the info!   But really, I have to clean my house for this??  Ugh.  :laughing:     An evaluation worries me just because he normally just stares at people he's never seen before, even in our home.  Should be interesting to see how this goes!

 

The therapist we had just asked us a bunch of questions and then spent a few minutes with some really enticing toys showing us how to do the exercises. I think they're used to seeing kids who aren't comfortable with strangers, and it probably won't factor into the evaluation.
 
As for the house cleaning, nah.

 

 
They've most likely seen worse, right?  I'm going with that.

 

I have a friend who does EI....trust me when I say...she has seen worse.

 

So Mini-Man had his speech (or lack thereof) evaluation this morning.   I had to take him to the office so nobody came to my house to see my lack of dusting! Woo.  Anyway, he acted pretty much as I expected, stared at the woman for a while, then played with the toys.  He did interact with her some but didn't speak at all, which is typical and why we were there.   She did say he is delayed, but not by much and it's all in the actual vocalization of speech.   She thinks he may have apraxia (where the brain knows what it wants to say but can't make the mouth say it for some reason) so they are having him come back twice a week.  She did do an exercise with him where he brought me a container of blocks to open so she was showing him the sign for open while saying it, then helped him do the sign while saying it and I then opened the box.  A few minutes later he brought a thing of legos over, handed to her and then tried to make the sign for open.  She said a lot of kids take a few sessions to learn that and he picked it up within a few minutes.  So we'll see how it goes.
 
Thanks for all the comments once again, definitely set my mind at ease.