late talking

[Guest guest]

I've been replying to a lot of emails so I hope you guys aren't all sick

of me. But I hope this helps at least one person.

Many chargers talk late because of hearing loss, others because our kids

are just delayed. The latter reason being because of retardation or

because our kids spend their early years critically ill and/or

hospitalized which delays their development.

My child never mimicked anything at all until she was about 1 1/2yrs.

This means no mimicking speech or actions. The speech therapist had us

start imitating her in hopes that she would think it was a fun game. So

we would imitate her coughing and sneezing or whatever else she did and

make it a game. The other thing the speech therapist did was have

Caitlyn imitate sounds instead of words because she felt sounds were

easier. So the first things Caitlyn imitated were us coughing and

sneezing (for pretend) and also, I remember this distinctly " making like

an Indian " (my sincere apologies to any native Americans on the

listserv, but this got my kid talking--we don't do this anymore!) and

we hit our mouth with our hand and make the whooping sound. Again, this

was the first " word " she imitated, although her motor skills were so

poor she was hitting her cheeks, her chin, everywhere but her mouth, she

was soooo cute! From then on, she started imitating lots of sounds.

Another thing that helped her speech tremendously. I bought a book on

sign language and signed as I spoke to her. This was the ST's

recommendation. This taught her that words have meaning and it also

emphasized the meaning because most signs are related to the meaning of

the word. Because it is easier for the child to sign than to speak, it

gave Caitlyn a chance to communicate with us. Her first signs were

" more " and " done " and she learned to let us know if she was still hungry

or full at mealtime. This taught her that she could get what she wanted

by communicating and the importance of communicating. The words soon

followed.

As I've said before, her speech is her strongest asset now and yet at 24

months she was saying less than 5 words. Yet at 2 1/2yrs she was saying

phrases and now at 3 1/2yrs she speaks in complete sentences (though her

functional use of language is still very delayed because of her

cognitive delay).

Our kids mostly speak late for a variety of reasons and some of them

speak much later than others. But I hope this gives you something to

work on while you wait on the waiting list for speech therapy.

Jeanne