I have been concerned for awhile now about my youngest son having speech delay issues. For many months I just decided to play the wait and see game. Then at 30ish months old I did talk to his pediatrician about it but he ended being no help at all. He was in fact waiting until the end of the visit to spring it on me that he was dropping us as patients because we are a non-vaccinating family. I lost a lot of trust in the medical community at that point and I didn’t have much to begin with. Since my kids rarely get sick I thought I would wait until we relocated to the city to find another pediatrician but then I stumbled across an old article online that made me sit up can take notice. This part in particular caught my attention:
2 to 2 1/2 years Vocabulary of 400 words, including names; two- to three-word phrases; use of pronouns; diminishing echolalia; 75% of speech understood by strangers 2 1/2 to 3 years Use of plurals and past tense; knows age and sex; counts three objects correctly; three to five words per sentence; 80% to 90% of speech understood by strangers
Uh say what? My son will turn 3 in just a few days and he knows: mom, okay, apple, cookie, chocolate, night, shoe, cup, eye, nose, hair, ear, teeth, drink, eaten, dog, cat, and a half dozen other small words. I have heard a sentence maybe 4-5 times total so far. NO WHERE near 400 words. Do they put this stuff out there to scare the crap out of parents? He also has a habit of adding an “en” after words like night-en, or eat-en, or dog-en.
Even though his speech is limited his comprehension is awesome. I talk to him like I talk to an adult and he understands everything and will follow directions. He just doesn’t communicate and it is getting frustrating that he cannot tell me what he wants or needs most times. This is going to make potty training VERY interesting.
Anyway, I need to decide if I should in fact take him to see a speech pathologist. I wonder if I can just go straight to them and not get a referral. I don’t want to set us up with another ignorant, small town doctor like the last one. But honestly even if they tell us he needs speech therapy I cannot see him sitting for any length of time for a therapy session. And another wrinkle is that our inurance will not cover any type of speech therapy…nice.
So does anyone have experience with this? I have had some moms tell me to get it done ASAP and then others tell me that they went that route and regretted it when their perfectly normal children ended up getting labeled as developmentally delayed. What do you think?
