My DS is 18months and he has had an OT come to the house since he was 11 months old to work on Feeding issue (he has medical issues) and he now has an ST come out once per week to work on his Speech skills. He was only saying about 3 words at the time. His speech was about that of a 9 month old and he was 15months when evaluated.

In the states you can call your local school district and Early Intervention will come out and do a full work up evalutain for free. They will eval ALL aspect of developement. Cognitive, emotional, speech, physical...EVERYTHING. It takes about 3 hours.

IF you quailify they offer services in the home to hlep the child. It is part fo the "no child left behind" act.

We have seen GREAT results with Jedd by now. We were also given some oral exercises to do to hlep  improve his jaw and tongue strength. They can really do some great things.

Good luck.

Your child is about 2 according to your homepage, correct? I think it's a great idea to see a speech therapist to get assesment on your child.

But I do want to just share my experience. My son didn't talk much until a couple of months after his 2nd birthday. He said some words regularly, but overall, he just didn't talk. When he did start talking, oh boy... he's nonstop!  Also, at his preschool, there was a boy who is already 3 years old and still grunts most of the time.

I know my answer isn't that helpful, but I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone in this situation. Good for you for taking the proper steps! If your child does have speech difficulties, it's great that you're taking action while she's young.

The longer you leave it before getting such help and the worse the condition is, the longer it takes.

My eldest needed speech therapy for all up about 2 years from age 3 to 5 years old, but the second year wasn't as often or as intense.

My second boy still can't talk properly and still has intense speech therapy which has always been intensely worked on at home for a couple of hours every day as well, and he's been going for about 4.5 years starting when he was 2 years old. He is a much more severe case though.

Hello, my daughter was 2 1/2 when I had to take her to speech therapy (she is now 13). It took almost 6 months of going twice a week and working with her at home doing the speech activities that she was set, for my daughter to start talking clearly enough for other people to understand her.

It was a lot of fun and we had a ball together playing the games and getting her vocabulary up. Lots of hard work but well worth it in the end. My daughter still has a speech impediment and needs to articulate her words better but otherwise she did really well.

I know all kids are different and will develop at different rates but if you put in the work and make it enjoyable for your child I am sure she will do well.

Good luck with it.

Shashawnee