Speech issue question

[kubiac]

My son's best friend's little sister is almost two and not talking yet. She speaks all the time, but as her mom says, she "sounds like a Minion" (from the Despicable Me movies). She is very verbal, but it is not intelligible. It has the cadence and fluidity of language, it just doesn't have any words or sounds that make sense in context. 

 

Other points:
* Her uncle was diagnosed with autism as a child and lives in a group home.

* She comes from a bilingual family. I'd say she hears English 70 percent of the time, Spanish 30 percent.

* Her brother spoke fluently and well in English from an early age. He understands Spanish but won't speak it most of the time.

* She seems to have fluent receptive language, as far as we can tell.

* The other night I was hanging out with the girl in question and basically asked her if what she says makes sense and sounds right in her head and she indicated that it did. I tend to believe her.

 

It seems like there is just some disconnect between the language formulation in her brain and what comes out her mouth, like a shift cipher or something.

 

Any thoughts on what this might be and what if anything we could or should do to help her?

[gingersmom]

She needs to go for an evaluation.

 

The first thing they asked me if anyone in the house does not speak English.

 

The sooner she gets help the faster/easier it is to remedy.

[Incognito]

I think your key words here are "almost two".  

 

Are there really NO intelligible words, or very few?  If you google various combinations of 24 months and language or speech or whathaveyou, you'll find the minimum amount of words that is within normal limits is quite low.  If the child didn't seem to have comprehension, that would be another issue.

 

[Dmmetler]

At that age, my DD had a pretty large number of comprehensible words, but also "spoke drag-ish" when playing by herself-it sounded like language, and had the cadences of language, but wasn't understandable. I have a friend who is a linguist, and at his suggestion, audio taped DD on several occasions, and his comment was that she was essentially using her own language consistently, with a much more complex sentence structure than she demonstrated in her speech, but was using only the sounds that are pretty typical of early childhood. His feeling was that she was unable to say what she really wanted to say in English, so she was saying it in her own language-and that she was directing it mostly at her stuffed animals because even if mommy and daddy didn't understand her, Draggy did ;).

 

She outgrew it as she got older, but still actively chatters to herself almost continually-it's just that now if you listen, you can understand what she's saying.

 

I'm generally in favor of "if you have questions, checking into it is worth it", but it may just be that her verbal development is outpacing her motor skill development right now.

[redsquirrel]

Can her mom understand her and translate?

 

This might help:

 

http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=29:admin&catid=11:admin&Itemid=117

 

"at 18 months, a child's speech is 25% intelligible"

 

If she is almost 2 and doesn't have words (cup, shoes, banana, book, baby, up etc) that even her mom can understand then I would say that an evaluation isn't out of order. If she lives in the US then the mom can call Early Intervention herself and make an appt. She doesn't have to talk to the pediatrician. Sometimes kids in bilingual homes start speaking a little later, but she would still be using words that made sense in context. She might use some in English and some in Spanish, but they would be understandable.

[zoobie]

Is she in the United States? Talk to the ped about Early Intervention evaluation. She doesn't have to go through her ped, but mine is great with having the numbers all ready to go for patients and being able to explain the process in our area.

[Murmer]

ENT!  My son was unintelligible and we found out he had fluid in his ears...when we did tubes he changed almost instantly to intelligible speech (minus his tongue thrust).  ENT is easier and usually faster than trying to get an eval done (ENT took 1 month to get into and tubes were done 1 month later, an Eval took 3 months and then a ridiculous amount of meetings)

[LizzyBee]

My son's best friend's little sister is almost two and not talking yet. She speaks all the time, but as her mom says, she "sounds like a Minion" (from the Despicable Me movies). She is very verbal, but it is not intelligible. It has the cadence and fluidity of language, it just doesn't have any words or sounds that make sense in context. 

 

Other points:

* Her uncle was diagnosed with autism as a child and lives in a group home.

* She comes from a bilingual family. I'd say she hears English 70 percent of the time, Spanish 30 percent.

* Her brother spoke fluently and well in English from an early age. He understands Spanish but won't speak it most of the time.

* She seems to have fluent receptive language, as far as we can tell.

* The other night I was hanging out with the girl in question and basically asked her if what she says makes sense and sounds right in her head and she indicated that it did. I tend to believe her.

 

It seems like there is just some disconnect between the language formulation in her brain and what comes out her mouth, like a shift cipher or something.

 

Any thoughts on what this might be and what if anything we could or should do to help her?

 

My middle daughter was unintelligible to everyone except me and her older sister at that age.  She was fine.

 

My youngest daughter was unintelligible to everyone, including me and her sisters, at age 3.  She was in speech and language therapy for six years.  In her case, she talked all the time, non-stop.  But her articulation was below the 1st percentile for girls her age. She is also dyslexic and has auditory processing disorder, so her speech deficits were part of the package, so to speak.

 

If there is no-one who understands her, I would definitely move ahead with having her evaluated. If they have insurance that will cover ST, I'd go private. You can usually get in right away, and therapy will be one-on-one rather than with a group.

 

If there is someone who understands her, I would be inclined to wait 6 months and see how she progresses. 

 

 

[redsquirrel]

ENT!  My son was unintelligible and we found out he had fluid in his ears...when we did tubes he changed almost instantly to intelligible speech (minus his tongue thrust).  ENT is easier and usually faster than trying to get an eval done (ENT took 1 month to get into and tubes were done 1 month later, an Eval took 3 months and then a ridiculous amount of meetings)

 

Very often a referral to an audiologist is part of a speech evaluation. If the child lives in the US and can be seen by someone in the EI program, they have audiologists who can quickly eval the child for hearing issues. This is free because it is part of the EI service. It should also have a very short wait for an appt. We got in the same week we called for an appt. But the wait to see an ENT was months.

 

Was this evaluation you are mentioning done through Early Intervention?

 

A Early Intervention evaluation should take a very short amount of time to happen. If you call for an appt someone from the office must follow up with a couple days. Then they make their first home visit again within days. The actual evaluation has to happen in a couple weeks from calling and should be completed in less than (I think) 60 days. I am pretty sure my son's was complete in much less time than that. Except for the audiologist exam it was all done in my home and it was very pleasant. The time between when I first called and requested an eval and his first scheduled speech therapy was absolutely not 90 days. It was much shorter.

[Murmer]

Very often a referral to an audiologist is part of a speech evaluation. If the child lives in the US and can be seen by someone in the EI program, they have audiologists who can quickly eval the child for hearing issues. This is free because it is part of the EI service. It should also have a very short wait for an appt. We got in the same week we called for an appt. But the wait to see an ENT was months.

 

Was this evaluation you are mentioning done through Early Intervention?

 

A Early Intervention evaluation should take a very short amount of time to happen. If you call for an appt someone from the office must follow up with a couple days. Then they make their first home visit again within days. The actual evaluation has to happen in a couple weeks from calling and should be completed in less than (I think) 60 days. I am pretty sure my son's was complete in much less time than that. Except for the audiologist exam it was all done in my home and it was very pleasant. The time between when I first called and requested an eval and his first scheduled speech therapy was absolutely not 90 days. It was much shorter.

 

Early Intervention did not do an audiology appt...we only found out about my son needing tubes after he shoved styrofoam down his ear and we had to do an emergency ENT appt to get it out.  Early Intervention did get him speech eventually but the ENT is the one who discovered he was not hearing which is why he was unintelligible (we were told it was like him being underwater which is exactly how he talked).