# Speech delay in 30 month old



## Literate (Jan 4, 2006)

Hi all. I'm hoping that parents of toddlers with apraxia and others with kids in speech therapy could chime in and help me.

My daughter is 30 months old. She has been in speech therapy once a week (home visits) for 14 months. She is generally an average kid, late walker though (18 months) with some low muscle tone, gross motor delay. Fine motor is excellent. Hearing is normal. Cute as a button.

OK, so, her receptive speech is very good. She does not say any words, except once she said "bear" once she said "elephant" (yeah, I was a little surprised.) She has said "dot" and "du" (duck). She runs around and says Mama and Papa spontaneously but not if you ask her to. She can't/won't say "mmm" if you ask her to.

I know they don't diagnose apraxia until 3 years or later. But having read http://www.apraxia-kids.org/ and such, she seems like a viable candidate.

So, my question is, does this sound like your child? Any thoughts on whether she could still have a "language explosion"? With a minimum delay of 40%, possibly higher?

Thank you.


----------



## Literate (Jan 4, 2006)

*bump*


----------



## alexsam (May 10, 2005)

I didn't want to read and not respond, though I really don't have any personal stories to tell... I might, however, suggest posting this in the Special Needs forum- they might have more for you to work with, as it sounds like it is a bit beyond the average toddler experience. They discuss a wide range of considerations that kids may have and maybe they have ideas for you or have been through it.

Also, what about asking the speech therapist?

It must be hard... but it sounds like you are an active, concerned and loving mom. All the best to you and your DD!


----------



## Sierra (Nov 19, 2001)

My son has delays including a significant speech delay that started in the cooing phase (when he didn't really coo), but he is younger (just shy of 21 months) and his receptive is not all that great (though he has mild-mod hearing loss on top of all kinds of cognitive issues) so even though I do think he has some definite signs of apraxia (a number of the signs truly fit like a glove), he wouldn't fit the typical for apraxia. So likely we won't receive that diagnosis, but who knows.

I think the closer a kid is to three, the less likely it is they will hit a spontaneous languge explosion not related to therapies/services. Usually even with therapies/services, it is still slow progress. But that doesn't mean it is impossible.

Is your dd in early intervention, or is this a private speech therapist? Do you do any other therapies, such as HANDLE to address neurodevelopmental stuff?

Anyway, I second the suggestion to post this in the special needs forum if you haven't already, as there are several folks there who have kids who have apraxia. Perhaps the toddler forum mod could just move this over there for you, so you don't have to make a whole new post over there and have this in two places. The thread title would still show up in this forum, so people could click on it from here or there even though it would be located in special needs.


----------



## Literate (Jan 4, 2006)

Thank you both for your responses!

I have so much to learn, both about how this board works and apraxia! I manually cross-posted into the "childhood years" forum and received some responses from parents a little further along than we are. I purposely didn't post in Special Needs because I was still hoping that someone would say "That sounds like our kid, but then everything cleared up magically!" -- in which case I figured that parent wouldn't be hanging out in special needs. But I think it's time to let that dream quietly die.









How do I ask that this be moved to special needs and/or merged with my duplicate in the other forum?

We are in early intervention, yes. What is HANDLE? Tell me more. Today we started omega-3 supplements.


----------



## shoes (Oct 17, 2006)

I know how you feel. Someone up there knows us mammas would work to do whatever it takes to get these little angels to where they need to be.
I have a 26 month daughter that I believe may have apraxia (or at least SOME disorder). She can't mimic words back to me. For an example... I'll say "Eden, look at the truck! Can you say truck?" and she thinks and very carfully responds "baaa!" She has about 4 correct words and 6 or so wrong words she consistenly uses for things. (Like yes=bye, please=dat, grandpa=dubda) She's smart as a tack with everything else though! We have someone coming to test her on Tuesday and started supplements about 2 weeks ago. Although we haven't heard any new correct words yet, she has started babbling, attempting words more and has been sleeping about an 90 minutes longer at night. whoo hoo!! I know that the supplements are doing SOMETHING.... and hopefully given more time will reflect in her speech.
Can I be nosey and ask what omega-3 you're given her?
I hope you find the supplements to be the magic bullet you've been looking for!


----------



## Literate (Jan 4, 2006)

Good old dubda! You know she loves him!

Right now we're using the Berry-Keen flavored Nordic Naturals, but I'm buying the adult version today, after reading http://www.mothering.com/discussions....php?p=7003429 (my other thread on the same topic). It sounds like they are still flavored, which is good because DD throws up immediately when we give her medicine she doesn't like the taste of. Otherwise, we'll be hiding it in the soy milk.


----------



## boingo82 (Feb 19, 2004)

Hi Literate,
It's not exactly like my son...he's 32 months old and has a severe receptive / expressive delay. He was diagnosed at 24 months and since then has improved by huge margins, but he's still not typical for his age.
One thing that has really helped for us is sign language. Like your DD he will not say things on command, but sometimes he would sign for them.


----------



## Literate (Jan 4, 2006)

I counted up her signs a month ago and she knows 50. She just usually won't use them -- she'd rather point and grunt. We are working on this.

Called back our EI coordinator today. She's going to try to get us a spot at Easter Seals, which means I'll have to take both DDs over there every week, but I really think we need a major change to shake things up.

We're only doing 1/2 tsp of the fish oil right now. I'll probably up that to a full tsp starting in a few days. She took it straight today, which was surprising to me. But, hey, who am I to argue.


----------



## wifty (Aug 16, 2006)

Hi! Sounds alot like my dd, but it got better at 34 months.

DD was maybe (and thats an iffy maybe) understood 10% of the time at 30 months. Her receptive was beyond where it should be, but she couldn't communicate. When she did say something, it was hard to understand and the order was always off.

Then, at 34 months, like magic, she had a word explosion. Thats not to say that we could understand everything......but understanding 50% made it possible for us to piece together the rest for the most part.

Now at 36 months, we (dh and me) can understand what she is saying about 70% of the time. There are still words in every sentance that we can't make out and her order of words is completely off, but at least we can understand more. A bonus is that her tantrums disappeared when we could understand her more at 34 months.

They were going to test dd at 3 years in order to get her involved in therapy, however, now she is within normal limits. She will probably not ever be super verbal.....more of a watcher and doer then a talker. We talk to her constantly and she is the only child, so statistically, she should be super verbal....but she is not. Maybe she will be an architect when she grows up. 

Good luck and I hope I helped in some way!

with smiles,
Rebecca


----------



## lisaadams (Nov 19, 2008)

Hi, I actually joined just to talk to you.........My son, Lucas, was SEVERELY speech delayed...didn't even babble, no Mama, Dada, a complete mute!!! I spent months and months absolutely convinced that he was autistic....he was slow....he was something?
2.5 months ago-just over 30 months old, he began speaking and then within three weeks, there was a speech explosion...like nothing I could have predicted or would ever have thought would happen. In two months he has gone from 0-hundreds of words!!! I know it is not the norm....but it happened to him!!! He doesn't use pronouns...me, you, I....but he uses speech to communicate...Yesterday he rubbed his stomach and said, "Lucas hungee"...that sort of thing. Don't lose faith...It happened to him. At the same time, if you think something is wrong, be diligent and watchful.

Hope I helped!!!

God Bless


----------



## lisaadams (Nov 19, 2008)

Hmmm, I am a bit of an idiot.....that post is 2 years old:-(
I hope everything turned out for you......


----------



## Literate (Jan 4, 2006)

What a blast from the past! Thanks for joining and welcome!

Yeah, we're still chugging along. She has profound apraxia, so it'll take years and years yet, but she will most likely talk normally eventually.

She's making good progress. She can even say a few phrases understandable to others, like "eye doctor" -- she just had a rust ring ground out of her eye last week. That was fun.


----------

