Reply to What led you to get your child's speech evaluated?

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to "What led you to get your child's speech evaluated?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I originally posted this in General Parenting but was advised that I'd get better advice on this forum, so I'm cross posting:

I know there's probably tons of posts on this, but bear with me, please! My daughter is 2 years and 8 months old and I have been wondering recently whether I should have her speech evaluated. Here's the basis:

She says a lot of words- I began keeping track of them in a note on my iPhone when she began speaking and add new words as she says them. At this point, I'd say she's learning around 10 new words a week or so. However, with a lot of her words, I doubt many people aside from her father and me could understand them. She does use consistent sounds for her words, but those sounds are not always exactly the word itself. So, for snake, she says something like "neek"- I know she means snake, but I'm sure a stranger would not know she means snake. Also, I've noticed that with some of her words, she says the beginning of the word, but not the end. For example, if she wants a waffle, she'll say "waff." I know exactly what she's referring to, but I can't figure out why she leaves the ends off her words. As far as sentences, we're at about three word sentences. "There's more pretties!" "Oh no, the dog!" "Want to get down!" and things like that. She listens and understands anything we tell her, even if there's quite a few steps involved; i.e., "Go put this in the trash can and then bring me your juice cup" - she can follow this perfectly, but she could not tell me, "I am taking this to the trash and bringing you my juice." She knows by sight all of her numbers and her colors and can say most of them, though the trickier ones like "orange" and "purple" she is unable to say. She recognizes some letters and can say some, but not at all of them.

My husband and I are on different sides of the fence on this. He says that she is saying plenty of words (in the hundreds) and using short sentences and following all commands, and recognizes and can use descriptors. But I can't help but feel like maybe she could just use a little nudge since she doesn't (or can't?) say the endings to many of her words and is only using very short sentences. I have tried to compare her speech to that of the other kids in our playgroup and she seems squarely in the middle. Saying more than some but not as much as others. So I'm just looking for a little guidance: if you got your child evaluated by a speech therapist, what were the signs in their speech that led you to do so? Am I expecting too much for her age? I'm a first time mom who had very little experience with small children before my daughter was born, so I fully admit I am going on nothing here but intuition and guesswork. I'd just like some sort of framework to go by from other mothers who had their kids evaluated- and if you have experience with evaluation, whether your child went on to need speech therapy or not, does anything in my daughter's speech patterns jump out at you as something a speech therapist would find concerning? Thank you so much.

(Also, in the other post, a commenter said that in MoCo you can get a free eval through Infants and Toddlers up until 3- from what I'm seeing for Loudoun County, that cut off is age 2. Could anyone with experience in Loudoun County offer any advice on who to go through to get a toddler over the age of 2 evaluated?)[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics