3 years old next week and still talking gibberish - Page 2

[Imakcerka]

As this is a forum it's perfectly acceptable to discuss openly about what could help and what might be necessary.  I don't get your anger towards those that feel there could be something more going on.  For the record, our Dr suggested we get our little ones hearing checked as she was not a big speaker either.  And guess what?  Her hearing was an issue.  She also refused to walk and he said it was her doing her own thing on her own time.  She didn't walk until she was 18 mos.  He wasn't a terrible Dr.  He was right on.  She's perfectly fine but still has a bit of hearing issues.

By the way May is Better Hearing and Speech month.  So whether you like it or not there may be other people out there frustrated and having a hard time trying figure out how to help their kids.  Some people will not be able to do it on their own due to circumstances beyond their control and it's nice to know they don't have to do all on their own.  Please save your distasteful words for another month. 

http://www.asha.org/bhsm/

[laohaire]

I think there are some issues with "labels" but I think dismissing them all is very misguided.

If my parents had been more concerned about avoiding a "label" for me than about figuring out what was going on, they would not have bothered to have my hearing tested.

If my parents had been more concerned about avoiding me being "forced into a mold" than helping me reach my full potential, I would not have hearing aids and would not have had speech therapy.

I was in speech therapy at age 2. Time is a factor. Thanks to my mother's actions, I speak well enough that few people have any idea I am legally deaf in both ears.

Without hearing aids and speech therapy, I think it is more than fair to assume I would have struggled in school (despite a high IQ), had serious limitations in my employability, had significant anxiety in my daily interactions, and been limited in my personal relationships. I don't think that's a fair exchange for the privilege of not being labelled "legally deaf."

Sometimes people are indeed forced into molds, like right brained learners in a left brained world. There are other people who need extra help in order to reach their full potential.

It's almost like you're saying there's something wrong with having a special need. Surely you're not saying that, are you?

I don't know what might be causing your child's speech difficulties, but what you've described is concerning enough to take steps to find out.

You may be afraid of getting the wrong diagnosis. That does happen. Some professionals have agendas. You are fully empowered to listen to the feedback you get and think "no, that's not it," and find someone else - but do it with an open mind. Don't say "no, no, no" out of fear, out of avoiding a "label." Put your priority on getting your child the help she needs rather than on the outcome you desire. I'm sure my mother didn't wish I was hearing impaired, but I'm very glad she accepted it and helped me.

[Daffodil]

You're interested in ways to help teach her to talk better - in other words, you want to learn some of the techniques speech therapists use - but you don't want to consult a speech therapist?  If you really just want to let her develop at her own pace, why are you so interested in teaching techniques?  If what you really want is to teach her to talk, why not consider consulting someone who has expertise in that area?

ETA: You seem to be worried about what kind of label she might get, but most likely there will be no specific label other than a statement that she's behind the average child her age in speech by such-and-such an amount.  You already know she's behind most kids her age, so being officially told that should be no big deal.  If the therapist suggests another label like apraxia, as Laohaire says, you're free to decide for yourself whether or not that label makes sense.  It's not like they're going to actually stick a physical label on her and make her wear it for life.

[Drummer's Wife]

What, exactly, is the downside of a developmental screening and potentially speech therapy?

We love our SLP, and I am so grateful for having my then 3 yo checked out at Child Find -- he's now 7 and has come so far because of therapy.

[mountainfeather]

My own experience is this: my child's doctor determined DD was behind in speech - I think it was around 18 months. She recommended testing for speech therapy. DD was tested. She got in the free state speech therapy program. A nice lady came over to my house every week to work with DD for one hour. During that time I enjoyed having my child be entertained by someone she liked for a little while while I got chores done. Games were played, play-doh was introduced. My daughter had now tested out of the program because her speech has improved to the point where she is at age level. DD and I were very friendly with the speech therapist and will miss her weekly visit. I also pumped the speech therapist for info on everything from the quality of local schools and playgroups to whether there were local homeschooling families, because she is in a position to have an inside scoop on that. She was a great all around resource.

The point of this story is what is the down side of testing and therapy? Therapy is done in a way that is enjoyable for the child. It is free, or at least I think it is free in most or all states. The child has another interested adult interacting with her, which is great for everyone. And no one forces you to do it. If you don't like the way things are going, you can always leave the program.

I am very confused by your angry rejection of something that might really help and seems unlikely to do harm.
 

[Jennifer Z]

You sound exactly like me about 7 years ago.  My husband also was delayed in speech, but started speaking in sentences around the time he turned 3 years old, my child was snuggly and would drag me everywhere and point to what he wanted, and interacted by giggling or being utterly frustrated when I would try and make him speak, and had the "word count" and sentences that the milestone charts said he should.  And, like you, every suggestion that something was wrong was met with defensiveness. (I suspect they are still there someplace back in my history here...I, too, was frustrated that people here were suggesting therapy of all things...isn't this supposed to be the place that was safe from all that mainstream nonsense?)  After all, I breastfed, ate organically, cloth diapered, didn't vaccinate, did tons and tons of tummy time and interacting, babywore, co-slept...everything, and, I had a boy, and boys tend to talk later.  I swore there was NO WAY there was something "wrong" with him.

I finally took him in for a screening.  Those few words and "whole sentences" were, as I discovered, not used the way typical children used language.  He had the word count, he technically had sentences (but they were echolalic, not a spontaneous combination of words), and those "babbling in his own language" were often echolalia where he wasn't processing it well enough to get distinct sounding words, just the general sounds, and he was missing a whole lot of things that I was totally blind to until years later when I really understood what was going on.  Those people who dared suggest I get him evaluated were right.  It was a jolt.  HOWEVER, therapies at this age are fun for the kids and extraordinarily valuable to everybody in the family.  Really, it was the hardest thing I ever did, but it was also the best thing I ever did and made the biggest impact for good in his life.

So, as a parent who has been there, there is absolutely no harm in getting evaluated, but letting it pass by can be harmful.  Love isn't always enough, sometimes you need the knowledge of professionals to help you learn how to teach your child.  If you are having to explicitly teach what most kids pick up naturally, you at least need to know what you are dealing with so you can become a better teacher for her.

Edited by Jennifer Z - 5/13/12 at 11:44pm

[Jennifer Z]

And being afraid of labels...I was too.  So much, that when I was interviewed about my child for a magazine, that is what they focused on in the article.

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-7257

[mamandedeux]

Oh, I also wanted to add that DS DID have a hearing issue as well, even though he hears well. I figured that because he could pick out a cat meowing outside (he'd look at me puzzled and say Meow? - I had a hard time hearing it) and could follow instructions, he was fine, but speech hits a number of frequencies, and he wasn't hearing all of them because of massive fluid in his ears. He failed 2 hearing tests. He got tubes in April, and passed the test 3 weeks later. An experienced audiologist can make the test painless and dare I say, even fun, for little ones.

[tibris]

I do not want to sit down and drill her an hour a day, she's not that type of kid. She is a free spirit and I want to keep her such. What I am looking for is small things I can do throughout normal activities that are different from what I am doing now.

Her last hearing test was between one and two, like I said it's not a hearing problem. Where my frustration is coming from is the fact I tried to be very up front in my question that she has neither motor skill, hearing or any other indicators of a developmental problem, she just doesn't want to talk and instead of getting answers to my questions I am getting a lot of answers that do not pertain to our particular problem. I know that is hard over the internet sometimes, but I have done my best to be as clear as possible and people are looking over that just to post what they want. I do not want someone that potentially has good information for us to over look this thread because it appears to have been well answered already because it hasn't.

WTH we are using the word label because this is the internet! It's easy! diagnosis has more letters in it! I've toted my kids to speciailists, We've been to neuphrologists, we've been to cardiologists, we've been to gastrologists. I was seriously considering getting my oldest to a therapist when she was going through a very angry spurt, but she was growing out of it by the time I found one that I felt was good enough to go to so I decided to wait it out. I am not afraid of getting things done that are necessary! This is one of those times like a couple other mothers have said, I can tell she is just being herself and making a choice and I expect she will start making leaps and bounds over the next year, just like she has made progress over the last few months. What I do not want is someone to diagnose her with some far reaching disorder that they are misinterpretting because she does not like strange adults and she certainly would not like strange adults in our house. Let me make this more clear than before. We just moved we had workers coming and going for weeks she did not want to be anywhere near them. There were a couple of them that we knew from my sister. We visited with them and I tried to get her friendly with them, they were here two days, she didn't want anything to do with them! And one of them has kids the same ages as mine, it's not like they were big scary people that didn't know how to talk to children. She made me hold her the entire time we were near any of them and wouldn't say a word. The gymnastics teacher is friendly and wonderful with kids, used to run her own daycare, it still took months for her to decide she liked her.

[Jennifer Z]

Speech Therapy is not about drilling the kid for an hour a day.  It isn't even close to that, or at least it certainly wasn't in our experience.  It is about getting processes set up that makes the day go smoother, learning what supports you can put in place to help reduce frustration and learn things.  

If you are fine with your kids going to other specialists, why are you resistant to them seeing an SLP and/or OT for services?  For our family it was less like medical interventions and more like learning new ways to play with my kids so that they could learn from play, the way all kids learn from play.  I still see SLPs and OTs as specialized teachers, who have the knowledge to facilitate learning in kids who learn differently than typical kids do.  

Basically, if you started a thread asking us to tell you what a SLP would recommend doing, it might be a better idea to actually get an SLP involved who can get to know you and your child and give far more valuable and targeted advice than a bunch of people with a wide range of experiences.  In my own experience, there was certainly some overlap between what helped my son and what helped my daughter (also speech delayed), but what was the most useful for each of them was quite different.

Also, you might consider going to a hearing specialist for an evaluation if you haven't already.  I thought my kids were quite obviously fine in that regard, but I was wrong on both counts.  My son has completely normal hearing, but after some investigation he was found to have an auditory processing delay.  He hears just fine, but his brain doesn't process the sounds correctly.  My daughter had normal hearing too, but she had deficits that looked exactly like somebody with intermittent hearing impairment, like you get with allergies.  Just because they appear to hear you doesn't mean that the sounds are useful to their brains.

Edited by Jennifer Z - 5/14/12 at 6:42am

[laohaire]

I was curious to know what your personal experience with labels is? It seems to be a trigger for you, and probably for good reason.

[tibris]

Originally Posted by Daffodil 

 It's not like they're going to actually stick a physical label on her and make her wear it for life.

laohaire - this is what triggered my response to label. I mean - seriously?

Okay, thank you for the responses that were answering my question, they are greatly appreciated. To everyone else who wants to accuse me of disliking people with developmental problems maybe I'm not the sensitive one to the word "labels", think about that. I don't even think I was the first one to use that word in this thread. Thank you for reminding me again why I left MDC in the first place because all you people want to do is argue.

[mamazee]

I have really mixed feelings about this whole conversation. On one hand, I definitely admire you allowing your child to develop at her own pace. I don't like children being put on time tables where they have to be able to do X by Y age. I am in total agreement there.

On the other hand, while neither of my children were late with speech, I know so many parents whose kids have had speech therapy and have been helped by it. But in a lot of those cases, the kids were becoming frustrated and were hitting/biting due to the frustration. But anyway, what I was wanting to get at is that a few of these kids ended up having hearing or developmental problems/labels, but most just went because their speech was behind and never had any other label put on them and had no other problems. It was just late speech.

I don't recall you saying that she was becoming frustrated to the point of hitting/biting. It might be a good idea to take her in to get her speech evaluated if she gets frustrated at some point.

I think speech therapists give families exercises to do with their kids - nothing that takes long but little things like saying "I put the pink pony in my purse" back and forth. I guess you could try having her repeat phrases that work on specific sounds with you and see if that helps.

I do hope you'll try to stay open minded about the idea of speech therapy. It isn't a bad thing, even if you aren't seeing a need now, and it might be a good idea to keep it open as a possibility if working with her doesn't move things along as you'd like.

[mamandedeux]

Thank you for reminding me again why I left MDC in the first place because all you people want to do is argue.

No, we don't.

[laohaire]

Originally Posted by tibris 

laohaire - this is what triggered my response to label. I mean - seriously?

Okay, thank you for the responses that were answering my question, they are greatly appreciated. To everyone else who wants to accuse me of disliking people with developmental problems maybe I'm not the sensitive one to the word "labels", think about that. I don't even think I was the first one to use that word in this thread. Thank you for reminding me again why I left MDC in the first place because all you people want to do is argue.

Wow. People have, granted, been telling you things you don't want to hear. But that is not rude.

This, on the other hand, is seriously, shockingly rude:

Originally Posted by tibris 

Look, I'm sorry your kid has developemental problems, but that's no reason for you to be rude and yes you are saying "it's not normal, better start therapy."

There is a very good reason why I said it "almost" (and at this point I would change that to "clearly") sounds like you are saying there is something wrong with having special needs. It wasn't an attack, it was based on your words, right there above. You were very, very rude to that poster and frankly you owe her a sincere apology.

[mamazee]

I don't think anyone means to argue. I think some people here have had very different experiences from speech therapy than it sounds like you're expecting, and are trying to let you know how their experiences differ from your expectations. It sounds like an argument is starting though, and I hope it stops or the thread could get closed.

[laohaire]

Also, you didn't answer my question (not that you are required to, obviously, but in case you thought you did answer my question).

I was thinking you must have had some personal, negative experience with labels in your own life. Perhaps that is something to explore.

Your quote from Daffodil is not the personal experience. It was apparently a trigger for you, and I was curious as to why.

There are some very valid issues with labels. It would be helpful perhaps for you to explore the reason for the trigger in more detail, so you can sort out what is a valid issue and what only looks like it but is not. There are situations where a child does not fit into a mold, and I'm on your side that it's detrimental to the child to try. But there are also situations where the child needs (and wants, and would thrive on) help. It would be a tremendous shame to add the latter into the former group.

[LitMom]

I have not read the whole thread. I would check it out with a speech therapist though, just to know what's going on. Even if someone suggests speech therapy, it doesn't mean you have to do it. Or if they seem really interventionist and you don't think you need it, you can look for a second opinion, or ignore it too. They might give you some things you can try regardless.

My younger child's language is still fairly indistinct. People close to him (me, DD, DH, the sitter, relatives, frequently-seen friends) know what he's saying, but some things are just not at all decipherable by other people. Last year, his preschool teachers noted this, said to encourage him to model articulation of words he uses a lot (he said "feet" for "sweet", and it was a reasonably-frequent word, so I worked on emphasizing "sw" versus "f" when saying it, and even showed him how to position his tongue to say "sw". But mostly, his teachers said it would likely progress on it's own, and just to keep an eye on it and discuss again this year. So, we've now "discussed it again." It's still not super clear, some words are better, some are not. We have a referral for a speech therapist, just to see what's up. 

[LitMom]

This might be a useful resource, from a SLP turned homeschooling mom: http://www.hiphomeschoolmoms.com/2012/01/speech-language-therapy-the-homeschooler/

Her series on "things to do at home" seems like something you might be able to use, in particular: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brighton-Park/171983872813430

[minkin03]

Originally Posted by tibris 
We just moved we had workers coming and going for weeks she did not want to be anywhere near them. There were a couple of them that we knew from my sister. We visited with them and I tried to get her friendly with them, they were here two days, she didn't want anything to do with them! And one of them has kids the same ages as mine, it's not like they were big scary people that didn't know how to talk to children. She made me hold her the entire time we were near any of them and wouldn't say a word. The gymnastics teacher is friendly and wonderful with kids, used to run her own daycare, it still took months for her to decide she liked her.

I can understand this. My 6 yo was EXTREMELY shy up until last year. She wouldn't talk to strangers or look them in the eye when they talked to her. She wouldn't let her preschool teacher touch her (i.e. put a loving arm around her while helping her with something). And when we went to visit family for 2 months she wouldn't let anybody hug her or hold her despite the fact they were family and we saw them everyday. Most wouldn't understand that but I did. B/c outside of these situations she was a very loving and talkative child. She was just extremely shy and particular about who she let in her personal space. Thankfully she has outgrown it and/or come out of her shell and now she will go up to strangers and strike up conversations. I think most medical professionals understand that kids (especially the little ones) can be shy and not going to necessarily speak until they develop a good rapport with them. 

I also believe in kids developing at their own pace in the terms of not rushing them to learn something they aren't ready for. Being a late talker isn't necessarily a bad thing. Some kids will go from no talking to opening their mouths one day speaking in full sentences at the age of 4. That said, with the frustration and anger your dd is showing b/c of her difficulties in communicating, in combination with the limited number of words and phrases is cause for concern. What you are looking for are ways to help her that a speech therapist would actually be able to do for you and it would be tailored to your child's specific needs. 

And fwiw my older dd was a late talker and had unclear speech. She would pass hearing tests but when she had a tympanogram done she failed and was found to have fluid in her middle ear which was impeding effective hearing and explained why we couldn't understand her gibberish talking.