? for those of you with speech delayed kids

My DS is 25 mo. old and has been receiving ST for 4 mo. (1 time a month). They just increase services to 2 times a month plus he is having tubes placed on Tuesday. I am somewhat hopeful that they will help but afraid they wont' improve his speech. He says about 14-20 words on a regular basis, sometimes needing prompting. Also does about 5 signs. All of his words are fairly clear for a 2 year old but there are 5 words that he uses (cookie, bye, sit, yeah, hot) that have the letter "d" infront instead of the accurate letter (c,b,s,y,h). Has anyone had this before and what did it mean? Would just like to hear some input.

Thanks so much, I am just a constant worrier!

 

I have just started studying for a masters in speech pathology -- so I'm not a speech therapist, but your description of your son was almost straight out of my textbook for Phonological Disorders/Delays. I thought I'd offer my reflections in hopes that it helps answer some questions or focuses some things you might want to discuss with your son's speech therapist. He/She will be able to explain more about what the goals for your son are and what kinds of therapies they are planning to do.

The fact that your son is getting ear tubes, suggests to me that he's had recurrent or even chronic middle ear infections. In terms of language development, a middle ear infection can be considered a period of auditory deprivation. In other words, the fluid in the middle ear mutes or distorts the language sounds around him. He essentially misses out on auditory input (learning opportunities) when he has ear infections and his/her speech is delayed as a result.

The second thing you mentioned, the way he puts the d sound in front of words beginning with other letters is called "phoneme collapse". The therapy he will receive should work to help him differentiate the beginning sounds of words by building on the contrasts between the different sounds. Given that your son has had ear infections, I would guess that his speech is underdeveloped (rather than disordered) and that speech therapy combined with tubes to reduce the impact of future ear infections, should really help him to make great progress to overcome his delay and catch up with his peers.

It's great that he's receiving help so young, and I hope that both the tubes and the increased services help him.

 

You could be surprised by the difference the tubes could make in your son's speech development. One of my boys chronically had fluid in his middle ear, and was speech delayed. Right after we put in the tubes at 3 years old, his speech improved almost right away. In addition we found out that he had hearing loss that was caused not only by the fluid ( conductive hearing loss), but also by his hearing nerve not functioning all the way ( he still had hearing loss after the fluid was gone). He did weekly speech therapy , and we got him to wear hearing aids - so within 12 months he completely caught up with his speech fluency had very minimal sounds distortion problem. He just turned 8 and is the top student in his class with no speech issues at all ( still wears hearing aids). Good luck !

 

Sarah used the "D" sound as a substitute for S, T, and C/K until she was almost 3. (That's a lot of letters -- so it meant that nearly all her words started with "D". ) She started getting speech therapy just before age 2 -- we quit when she turned 3 because she had improved so much, she no longer qualified for EI.

Our ST said that substituting D (which is a very easy sound to make) for harder sounds is very common. Your ST can show you some ways to teach him how to say the other sounds, and ways to get him to practice. Try to be patient, it doesn't happen overnight. The tubes will probably also help a lot. (Sarah tested OK for hearing -- for her, it seems to be more of a muscle-development issue than a speech or auditory processing one. She hears and understands the difference between all the sounds, she just has a hard time getting her lips & tongue to form the right shapes.)

 

Just want to say don't worry!!! My four year old did not talk until he was 26 months. And I mean nothing!! No hearing problems and you could tell that he understood everything you said to him. Then seriously within a 2 month time frame he went from struggling to get one word out to having entire conversations! He still struggles to make some of his words correct phonetically, but we are just glad that he is talking. We never really discovered the reason for his delay.

 

My oldest was speech delayed, but we caught it early. She didn't say anything that was understandable. It turned out she didn't have good hearing, because of chronic ear infections and fluid. She got tubes at 23 months, and 2 weeks later words exploded out of her. A week after that she had her first and only speech therapy appt and she was at or above average on test.