Hellobee Boards

I know this is not quite the same, but DS1 only had one word until 22 months when he added a second. He very slowly started adding words. I felt like he would never talk. He was in speech weekly until 3 through EI. He didn't talk a lot until he was 3.5 or so, but like your DS he was very communicative and there was no doubt he understood us. And now he's 5.5 and in Kindergarten and literally never stops talking. I mean he's quiet at school when he needs to be, but he talks to me non stop when he's home.

@Purpledaisy: a friend of mine has a boy that has a severe speech delay. They started getting him evaluated and in therapy around age 2 because he wasn't really even making sounds yet. He was eventually diagnosed with Childhood Apraxia of Speech. There are different levels of CAS and his is the most severe. I moved to a different town 3 years ago and lost touch with his mom a bit, but the boy is now 10. I know as of when I moved when he was 7, he was only speaking 2-3 word phrases, after years of speech therapy multiple times per week.

This case is very extreme, I hope I'm not scaring you! I actually know another family with a girl that has CAS, but her case was much more mild and after a few years of therapy, she was mostly caught up by the age of about 5-6.

My 3.5yo at the time tested as less then 0.1% for intelligible speech. She had “words” but was not at all understandable. She was diagnosed with apraxia. We did extensive speech therapy (4x/week) plus ear tubes plus a soft pallete specialist plus clipped a tongue tie plus probably anything else you can think of. Now at 5.5 I would says she’s about 80% as good as her peers. If you have any specific questions let me know but you can get caught up it just takes a lot of work and I would explore all avenues of things that might help

@Purpledaisy: I should add that DS still goes to speech every week but it's for articulation due to a repaired cleft palate. He really started to take off after 3.5. Is your DS in school or daycare? I hope you get the very best support possible and some stories of hope!

@Purpledaisy: It sounds like he is doing a lot of jargoning. Do you think it is mostly a will or skill thing?

@Purpledaisy: just to give some perspective on what's out there in terms of intervention, here in NY he absolutely would quality for extensive services. They would come to your house for speech therapy and he would qualify for what we call Head Start, all free. My friend's son is moderately deaf and doesn't speak much, and he gets tons of services free through state programming. He can speak but it's very unintelligible. He's doing great but they had him in speech since 6 months old. His speech grew so much once he started Head Start. I would say the earlier the better so he can catch up, which I'm sure he will!!

@Purpledaisy: we had our lo enrolled in public school speech even though she didn’t go to preschool there. We did speech there twice per week. If she had gone to school there she would have gotten it 3 times per week. We also supplemented with a private slp twice a week for a total of 4 times per week and I think the consistency of that really paid off. I love our private slp much more then the school slp and the slp we saw at the children’s hospital. Our private slp doesn’t have to go by iep or anything like that so she can be outside the box and she’s super amazing. Now at kindergarten she gets speech twice per week and we were still doing our private slp once per week. We just dropped down to every other week with her but we want to keep her on for the summer

@Purpledaisy: I’m a SLP in early intervention and its great you’ve gone to the school district to get started with services. I just wanted to give you some resources if you want to look into apraxia, as there is a lot of (not great) info on the internet. It will be likely that a school SLP won’t give this actual diagnosis, even though they may think it is that. The good news is intensive speech at this early age often has good outcomes for kids with apraxia. Let me know if you have any questions.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/childhood-apraxia-of-speech/symptoms-causes/syc-20352045

https://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/Childhood-Apraxia-of-Speech/

Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if they make some suggestions for alternative communication system. A lot of people think this would hinder verbal communication, but there has been a lot of research that suggests it will help verbal communication. Here is some info on that, if you’re interested.
https://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/AAC/