Hi. I am wondering if any one has had a child with speech delays due to limit variety if foods. So I have a 19 month old boy who can eat only 5 foods due to gastric upset intolerances. He does not use any actual words. He has on occasion made a ma and da sounds but not regularly. Today we seen a speech pathologist who told us she believes that he doesn't talk because he hasn't had the right foods to develop his tounge control properly. I have not heard of this before. I would love for it to be that simple but I am really unsure. He also has gross motor delays and I believe some social and emotional delays. He interacted well with her today but this is not always the case. Sometimes he will totally ignore people and react the way I would expect. Anyway just wondering if anyone else out there has had similar situation and would like to share the outcome. Thanks.
2 Replies
This is quite possible. My son has oral motor issues and eating different foods and using his mouth in different ways was a huge part of his speech therapy program. However not eating a variety of food may equally be a result of oral motor problems. If you can't use your mouth correctly it can make a child avoid foods that are hard to chew for example. I think your spider sense is tingling because you think it's not just a speech issue. I would see a child psychologist to find out if there are developmental delays. Good luck
My daughter has a speech delay. She had so many testing done when she was 2.5 yrs to find out what was wrong. Our GP said just wait till we get to school but I knew their deff was other issues going on. I suggest to take him to a developmental paediatrician they will test everything, movement, speech if he has any, everything it's a full physical then they can point you in the direction of what he needs speech therapist, or OT, or physio it all depends. If your in perth I highly recommend the Child Welbeing Centre in Midland they are so great and speech therapist their is extremely good.
I would also suggest looking into the Language Development Centres. They are schools around perth that only do kindy to yr 1. My daughter attends one. Everything they teach in the class rooms are around speech and language they Taylor everything to your child. Always have two teachers in the class and instead of main stream class with 20+ kids their classes are a max of 14 kids which gives a lot more one on one. The school is public and not overly expensive although it can be hard to get in. WA is the only state that currently have these specialised schools so if u live in WA take advantage of it and push to get your child into this school for kindy my daughter has improved 200% since attending and I highly recommend it