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Hi Chezzy,

  I also have a son who was slow to start talking. My son will be 4 in April.  Like your son, my little boy also has an older brother and sister.  Up until about 8 months ago, my youngest son could only put a couple of words together and they were very hard to understand.  The doctors also suggested I look at speech therapy.  I got home and watched my kids together and realised that my 2 older children where doing all the talking for him, so he had no reason to speak.  If he wanted a drink, he would point to the fridge or tap and the other kids would ask him "do you want a drink?" and he would nod. 

  I spoke to the older kids and told them to make him ask for a drink, even if they couldn't understand him, at least he was trying to talk.  I also brought him some alphabet cards and while the other kids were at school, we would sit down together and spread the cards out on the floor picture side up.  I would ask him to get my a card eg the card with the dog, then I would get him to say what the picture was.  Within  2 months, he was saying so many more words and we were starting to understand him more.  Now he is putting up to 10 words, sometimes more together into sentences.  Some words are still harder to understand, but he isn't that much further behind his cousin who is turning 5 in March and has gone to Kindy since he was 18 months old.

My youngest son has never gone to Kindy.  My eldest son went to kindy from 2 1/2 until he started grade 1 and it made no difference to his speech or learning.  My daughter spent 3 months at kindy when she was 3 and had a bad experience with a teacher, so she never went back. She is about to start year 7 and has never had a problem with her work or speech.  My youngest son never has, and never will attend Kindy. He starts prep school in 2008.  I work with my youngest son for about 30 minutes per day every weekday that my older kids are at school.  We alternate between speech, numbers, alphabet, writting etc and he is now ahead of his almost 5 year cousin who will start prep school this year.

 If you work with your son for a few minutes per day on his problem areas, he will pick it up in no time at all.  If after a few months, he still has made no improvement, then I would consider looking into speech therapy. Get you older children to help, by playing games with him, by making him say words.  He will want to copy his older siblings.

Tracey

hi chezzy.no need to panic about your little one. but would most certianly think about nursery. one of my boys i did not send to nursery and went straight to school.now hes not quite ahead as he should  be.but loves being there.i will not miss nursery agian. good luck.

maybe its time to take him to child care/pre-school. Or maybe a speech therapist. My daughter turns 4 in april and she speaks like an adult (so to speak). What surprises me is that he has siblings. Is he a shy child?