My boy has forgotten how to talk

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Oh gosh, I’ve known so many kids with speech delays for so many reasons, the most common being that that’s just ‘how they were’. He’s still so little, it’s so good you’re getting him services this early. I’ve known some people who didn’t start to worry until the kid was closing in on 4 (especially if late talking runs in the family which it often does) and then it’s a struggle to catch up with therapy for kindergarten. Early intervention and speech therapy does wonders. Here’s hoping it’s just a blip and he’ll be right on schedule in a couple years.

My littlest sis suddenly stopped talking and responding normally when she was about 4. Thank god it was quickly obvious something was off, and when mom took her to the doctor it was discovered that her ear canals were completely blocked, packed with hard wax. The doctor had never seen anything like it. She had to have her ears flushed every month for a couple years after that, but hasn’t had problems with earwax overproduction since.

22

One of my good friends has a son with speech delays. He’s just fine mentally he just had a hard time forming the words. He received a year and half of speech therapy and he’s quite articulate now. :slight_smile:

23

My buddy’s oldest didn’t hardly open his mouth until he was 9 years old. Srsly, I don’t think I heard the kid say 10 words before his 9th birthday.

Now, you can’t shut him up. :stuck_out_tongue:

Srsly, they’ve tried. I often remind them of how stressed they were when he wasn’t talking, and how I used to tell them to relax and enjoy those years, that they would look back on them fondly. :smiley:

24

One of my sisters-in-law was developing normally and speaking fairly well until her parents separated when she was about 3, then she slid dramatically backwards. When she did start talking again she would garble her words (e-buppy for butterfly is one I remember) and I think she had to have some speech therapy in early primary school. However, she’s a normal, chatty 23 year old now, and she’s done well both in school and in life. It took a while but ultimately it was just a temporary setback.

25

My son said a few words, including “car”, but then he stopped talking for over 2 years. He meowed like a cat and made all kinds of other (brmph, for instance) cat sounds, ticked like a clock, made various very convincing motor noises, but he would not speak. His father spoke to him in French, I spoke to him in English as we had agreed he should learn both languages.

My pediatrician was about to give me a referral to some sort of specialist for tests when he had what turned out to be an eureka moment: he suggested we only speak to him in one language. A few days after we started, he spoke in short complete sentences.

In a way, I’m making it about me again, but by this story I just meant to say that there are no set rules in child development. You’re right to look into this, but don’t worry too much. From what you’ve written, he understands language pretty well, and can follow simple instructions, those are good signs of intelligence.

ETA, my son is now an adult and an excellent communicator. Even with cats.

26

I can understand your worry, and I think you’re smart to start right off trying to eliminate any physical causes, but it could be a million things including nothing at all.

My youngest didn’t talk much until well after his 3rd birthday, now he’s an amazingly brilliant advanced genius :smiley:

I’ll second what someone else said upthread and ask if your boy has any need to speak? I know mine counted on his siblings and parents to pretty much handle things without needing to be asked out loud, and even now he’s a young man of few words.

I loved the sound of his little voice though, so I started waiting until he asked for things, or asking for his opinion on things and eventually he started piping up.

27

Update: I talked to my sister in law this morning (she’s a primary teacher) and she strongly suggested that I check out whether he might be gluten/lactose intolerant. Apparently she’s known a couple of children to suffer serious delayed development because of that, until it was figured out - basically they were just so uncomfortable and in pain from their gut all the time that they couldn’t think about anything else properly.

And, as it happens, his gut always has been kind of wierd, and he’s been increasingly grumpy and lethargic the last few months (wanting to be carried all the time - even at the playground sometimes)

So this morning I went down to the supermarket and bought a bunch of gluten-free stuff of various descriptions, and I’m going to try him on that diet for a while - if nothing else, this will give me something to do till the audiologists appointment in three weeks’ time, and stop me obsessing too much.

Today he was playing with a toy camera at playgroup, clicking the button and going “Mile! Mile!”. It’s the little things you hold on to…

Tomorrow is our oldest daugher’s seventh birthday. So whatever happens - no obsessing about Daniel tomorrow! It’s Rachel day, and I will be happy.

28

Gluten free is worth a try, at least for a couple of weeks. And really, once you get the hang of it, it’s not as hard as it feels the first few days. A bonus for us is that going gluten free actually *increased *the diversity of my daughter’s diet. Previously, she was basically a wheat wheat wheat kid (crackers, noodles, bread, etc.) and now she eats meals with brown rice and quinoia and potatoes and tapioca and…the list is nearly endless.

Celiac.com is a great resource for gluten free diets.

Also, I’ll save you some money and experimentation time: Udi’s Gluten Free Bread is the only gluten free bread worth buying. Seriously. How could it be that different from other gluten free breads? I don’t know. But it is. Gluten free breads tend to be dense, heavy, crumbly bricks. You’ve got to refrigerate them or they mold in seconds. You have to heat them or they’re unswallowable. Except Udi’s. Udi’s is…bread. That happens to be gluten free.

“Hidden glutens” we’ve gotten bit by: barley malt, malt color, barley malt color, etc. in breakfast cereals. Fillers in cheap hotdogs and lunchmeat. Soy sauce (LaChoy’s doesn’t have wheat, most other supermarket soy sauces do). Gravy, casseroles, soups - I always assume these things at a restaurant are thickened with flour (at home, I use cornstarch).

EVERYTHING but the corn, green beans, seasoned rice and potato salad at KFC has gluten. Everything. Even the “grilled” chicken and mashed “potatoes” use flour.

McDonald’s will happily make a Happy Meal cheeseburger with no bun if you ask. Apple dippers are gluten free. The shakes are gluten free at McDonalds, as are the white and chocolate milk. Perfect for a once-in-a-while easy treat! (Their french fries are not gluten free, nor are their grilled chicken breasts!) While there’s a chance for cross-contamination in any kitchen that’s not dedicated gluten free, we’ve not had a problem at McDonalds.

For a good site for restaurants with gluten free options, there’s http://gfrestaurants.com/

29

I know I talk about it so much on here I’m beginning to sound like a parrot, but Angel Food (angelfoodministries.com) now features an anti-allergen box, which is basically breaded meat products that are allergen (including gluten) free. If you want to see what they might have this month that may be suitable for Daniel, go to their website, and click on ‘this month’s menu’. Having a resource like that, especially when you’re new at the ‘allergen game’ may be a help. The website can also help you find out where the closest distributor is to you.

And happy birthday to Rachel!! :slight_smile:

30

There are many people who find a link between intake of casein (from dairy) and gluten (from wheat and many other grains) and brain behavior - I learned a bit about this when learning about Dweezil’s autism, a dozen or more years ago.

I do not know how widely this is believed these days by the medical establishment. However, as long as you’re watching to make sure your son has a reasonably well-balanced diet, it’s definitely worth a try.

We wound up taking Dweezil dairy-free almost by accident. He was 3 years old when we got his autism diagnosis. He had a stomach bug and we took him off dairy until the diarrhea had resolved (for a week or more, if we let him have milk, the diarrhea came back).

And we noticed that his speech seemed to improve. Now, this is a kid who had very early, very clear speech, and a huge vocabulary, but his conversational skills were far behind the curve. So we went “hmmmmm”. And decided to keep him dairy-free for a while. We overall noticed a definite improvement both in speech and behavior (somewhat fewer tantrums). Not dramatic enough to be a “cure” by any means, but I think it lowered the amount of static in his brain a bit and let the real kid show through a bit better, if that makes any sense.

We opted NOT to take him gluten free. A few months earlier, on the advice of an allergist, we did a wheat-free challenge (3ish weeks with no wheat, then we re-introduced it) and his behavior got worse during the wheat-free period. Since gluten is so hard to avoid in any kind of prepared foods, we decided it wasn’t worth it.

Dweezil also had longstanding digestive issues. Not complaints of pain… but he refused to be potty trained. We finally got him out of diapers/pullups at age 5… whereupon he immediately developed encopresis. That was… “fun”.

Anyway - back to your concerns over the speech issues: I won’t whitewash things; basically the doctors will really zero in on a child who is still noticeably speech-delayed at this age, particularly if he’s lost speech he once had. I do remember when Dweezil was going through his initial diagnostic evalueations, they really focused on “are you sure he never regressed” (we were certain he had not - he was behind the curve but never lost anything once he mastered it).

It sounds like you’ve got things in motion now to get the reasons diagnosed, with having the speech visit with the nurse; you should hopefully see a licensed speech therapist soon and also a hearing test should be a part of his very near future since that can explain SO much. Possibly a visit with a pediatric neurologist will be in order as well.

31

Thanks for the gluten-free links, guys. Fortunately Daniel has always enjoyed a pretty varied diet, and some of his favourite things are meat, fruit and rice, so I think our experiment will be pretty straightforward. I just have to remember to buy real sliced meat that you can actually see the grain in, not cheap processed crap, and check the rice crackers for additives in the flavours. The result will probably be that we’re all eating better, actually!

WhyNot you know, I hadn’t even considered that gluten-free bread was a thing! I don’t think they carry it at our supermarket but there’s a specialist allergy-free-things shop near our church which I’m going to check out. What I did find at the supermarket were gluten-free orange-choc biccies which are so delicious I’m tempted to just eat 'em all myself.

norinew thanks for the birthday wishes. As a matter of fact, she did have a very happy birthday, and anticipating an equally happy party on Saturday (tomorrow. No, actually today! - I must get to bed!) This year’s the first time we’re let her have a “venue” party, at the Fairy Shop, which I’m very thankful for, since I’m so not up for cleaning the house at the moment.

Mamma Zappa thanks for checking in. I’m really interested in your experiences too - I remembered you have a son with autism from earlier threads. One thing I’m thinking about at the moment - we moved house a couple of months ago. I remember Rachel finding a similar move, when she was 2 1/2, quite traumatic (she would wander round the house for weeks saying at intervals “I want to go home!”). Am I right in thinking that, if Daniel does turn out to have some degree of autism or similar, that would mean that a move like that was particularly difficult for him?

I realised I never responded to things people mentioned upthread about kids who “don’t have to” talk because elder siblings translate for them. That’s definitely not the case here - in fact, he doesn’t tend to interact with the sisters very much, he does a lot of playing by himself (another red flag, I suspect) and with me. What he does have is a Bigger Sister Julia (almost 5) who’s a complete conversation hog, and isn’t quite school age so she’s around a lot soaking up his potential attention. So I’m concentrating now too on giving him more one-on-one time, and not letting her interrupt all the time.

We had a very happy day today. Whether it’s that the new diet actually is being gentle to his gut, or just because it was fairly relaxed and low-key, we got lots of playing, and a bit of helping mum with housework, and one or two random words here and there, so that was good.

32

Not only would that be particularly stressful for a kid with a development disorder, it would be stressful for a “normal” kid, as well. It’s very common for kids to regress to an earlier stage of development during a move, a divorce, a new baby in the house or other similar stressful time.

Still worth getting checked out, but suddenly I feel much better, if it helps any. :wink:

33

I’ll second WhyNot’s recommendation of Udi’s (you WOULD think they’d all be the same, or someone else would have figured this out, but no, only Udi’s - there muffins are darn good, too - don’t know if you can get it in Austrialia however - the company is in Colorado) - but I’d suggest doing a bloodtest for celiac BEFORE you go gluten free - you have to go back on gluten to get the blood test done. That will give you a much better (but not perfect) understanding of if you are dealing with celiac. Its possible the blood test comes back negative and you still feel an improvement going gluten free, in which case go ahead and keep it up. But if the improvement is non-existant and there isn’t any celiac - I really wouldn’t bother - I’ve been doing it for three years and its not easy for a grown up to avoid wheat, its a bummer as a kid to be denied cake at birthday parties (many mom’s make a batch of gf cupcakes and freeze them so they can send something along for birthday parties and such).

34

You didn’t mention if the GP checks his ears on a regular basis. If not, or he has a lot of ear infections, chances are good that the speech part is due to chronic fluid buildup in the middle ear. You can do a layman’s hearing test at home by trying to startle or infatuate him with sounds from behind and to the side. He should respond to unusual noises from sources he can’t see by turning his head towards the sound. If he seems oblivious to sounds from sources he can’t see, he may have trouble hearing.

If this is the case, the good news is that it is easily remedied with low risk procedures.

35

However, just reading in another thread that you’ve lost your nouns since becoming a mom, I’m worried again. :frowning:

36

Elimination diets have remained popular in the lay press through mainly anecdotal report of their effectiveness, but I’m not aware of much scientific support for the treatment as yet.

More from a source I trust:

37

My nephew had the same problem. Except it turned out that the doctors had left something in his ear. It wasn’t caught until his kindergarten checkup!

The first thing that leaped to my mind with speech delays was some form of autism, but your subsequent posts made me pretty sure that wasn’t it.

And I’ve already prayed for you, and will try to remember to continue.

38

It’s catching! Ruuuuuunnn!!!

:stuck_out_tongue:

39

No, probably not in the contagious sense, but there are hereditary things which can cause aphasia (inability to produce or recognize words).

40

The most important first step is to check his hearing. My DIL’s sister hadn’t talked by age 3 and it turned out there was some kind of blockage in her ear canals. That was fixed and she started talking quickly. Although my DIL claimed that her sister’s language was never quite normal, but I certainly couldn’t detect any problem.

So that would be the first thing I would check.