Speech Therapy

Just after Sam's second birthday in February I took him to see the Health Visitor; he still wasn't speaking, he wasn't even babbling. And on Monday, five months after his birthday, we finally got to see a Speech Therapist. The wheels do grind exceedingly slow in the NHS sometimes.

Anyway, the therapist spent some time with Sam testing his play skills and comprehension and concluded that he's perfectly normal in all other aspects of development; he is just being slow with his talking.

Obviously this has come as a great relief to us; for the time being our fears of speech apraxia, years of therapy and special schools have been allayed. While there may yet come a time when (if he still isn't talking) he may have to be referred to a paediatrician, for the present the therapist is confident that we can get him talking after some sessions with her.

So, now we're in the system, it won't be another 5 months to our next appointment; we will be going back next month. In the meantime, we have to continue with our efforts to get him to talk - he says Dadada quite a lot now and even managed Mama yesterday, so maybe we are already making progress. Still, at 2 1/2 years he should have 250 words by now, so we have a long way to go.