KiasuParents - Parenting in Singapore

Tigermomof2,
Have you read through the pages of this thread? Some useful stuff to read through from here.
https://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/foru ... 75&t=35256

Send him for ear check (we did ours after our polyclinic doctor recommend it to be done. Turned out his ears were partially blocked).
Cut off reliance on TV and hp.
Go to polyclinic for milestone developmental check up and tell the doctor your concerns and if they spotted the same, to write you a referral letter to meet specialist. Via government intervention centre with referral then you get subsidies, but longer wait time and priority given to severe cases.

First, no 2 kids are the same, even siblings. However, if you are concerned about his development, the first place to go is probably to your doctor - a GP or pediatrician, or check with the nurses who do the child vaccinations. They will be able to advise.

The guidelines in books or online are averages, but the range of "normal" can be very wide. My older girl only spoke her first words at 23 months, while my younger one spoke at 15 mths. My older girl crawled at 11 mths and walked at 18 mths, while the younger one crawled at 7 mths and walked at 12 mths. Not understanding instructions and ignoring you may be an issue, or it may just be that he isn't interested or isn't so compliant. You will probably find that nothing conclusive can be determined at this age, and you will be asked to monitor until he's older. Just continue to engage him in communication even if he doesn't speak, and encourage physical play.

Agree with both jedamum and slmkhoo. If you bring him to a good pd, the pd can check the ears and give recommendations depending on his own experience. At the age most likely you will be asked to observe and do as what slmkhoo suggested.

I noted that your two children are both not within average range -your elder is hitting milestones earlier than average and your younger later. This will make you even more worried because the disparity is even greater if you take your elder one as the standard.

I have been told that crawling is a very important stage because it requires left right coordination across the midline. This lays the foundation for future development. Everything, including speech, requires coordination across systems. Did your child struggle with this stage or simply started later? If there was some difficulties getting the coordination right, you may want to keep an eye on his coordination development and really encourage appropriate physical activity to support development in this area.

Some gentle suggestions that may or may not be relevant - given that your older child was faster in development, consider if you are also going “too fast” for your younger child who may need more support. This may mean slowing down your speech, making sure he is looking at your lips when you introduce words, encourage him to repeat after you etc. Be deliberate and patient. It may take a while before you find the right pace for your younger child.

Hi I am a mother of a 2.5 year old. We have been going to speech therapy at KKH monthly since about half a year ago. While my child has improved, the speech therapist pointed out that he should already been answering simple questions. The problem is we have been asking my child simple questions but he tends to repeat them instead of answering them. It appears he is unable to tell that it is a question in the first place. The speech therapist suggested that we (i.e. myself and my husband) model the question-and-answer and we have done it but my child doesn't appear to pick it up. Would like to know if anyone has any other strategies that we can use?

A semi wild guess - is your tone the same for questions and answers?
Eg question : what is this?
The inflection for ‘this’ can be up or down. Make an effort to inflect up to emphasise that it is a question.
Answer: this is a toy car.
Similarly, inflection can be up or down for sentence ending to express different emotions. Make an effort to inflect down to make it a statement and increase the differentiation from a question.

Take note if your child is watching your face or your lips. If he is watching your lips he is trying out the sound of the words so his focus is there. If he is watching your face he is trying to read your intent. So exaggerate your facial expressions to match your question or answer.

myraleez wrote:Hi I am a mother of a 2.5 year old. We have been going to speech therapy at KKH monthly since about half a year ago. While my child has improved, the speech therapist pointed out that he should already been answering simple questions. The problem is we have been asking my child simple questions but he tends to repeat them instead of answering them. It appears he is unable to tell that it is a question in the first place. The speech therapist suggested that we (i.e. myself and my husband) model the question-and-answer and we have done it but my child doesn't appear to pick it up. Would like to know if anyone has any other strategies that we can use?

I am not a professional, but just curious: If you ask him: “What is your name?” Does he repeat back the question to you?

If he does not even know how to answer with his own name, I would have some alarm bells going off. Please take a look at this article on echocalia and autism: https://www.verywell.com/why-does-my-ch ... ses-260144

Please observe and raise this concern to the therapist and ask her professional opinion. I have encountered some friends’ kids who were still repeating questions until 5 or 6 years old, thankfully they outgrew it, but still better to have it checked out.

Any speech therapists to recommend in the east?

Hi parents, Other than finding speech therapist, you may contact me as I'm a private educational therapist. I'm providing home based intervention for children who has Down syndrome and others diagnosis. Kindly go to https://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/serv ... ial-needs/ to find out more!

I'm ready to support you and your child.

My girl is now in N2 and teacher has been telling me that my girl is lagging behind her classmates in terms of everything. My girl is all along very timid (scared of shadow and sudden loud noise) and is very gentle natured and seldom throw temper (except when she dun get enuf sleep). So when I asked the teacher for more information, they were telling me that she's very quiet and seldom answer teacher's question and cannot do her worksheet by herself. And my girl is still unable to pronounce words starting with "K" and "C". For example, "Cat" she will pronounce as "Dat", and "Kite" she will pronounce as "Tite"

So i decided to send her for development assessment at Polyclinic. The doctor told me that he feels that she is "okay" as she can answer all his simple questions and she is not shy to strangers. However, he does notice that her speech is not clear as well. So he recommended that I go to KKH for further assessment.

The thing is, after the assessment at KKH, the doctor also told me that she feels that my daughter is "okay" as well and asked me what is my concern. So i told her that my main concern is really just her speech, but the teachers comment that she is slower than her peers. So the doctor commented that is it the school's expectation too high? To be honest I am not sure as I have only 1 daughter and there is no one i can compare to. I do not want to compare her with her classmates or anyone as I feel children develop differently. I just want to know if my daughter is normal at her development rate and not comparing against anyone else.

Anyway, I am a bit doubtful of the diagnosis of the doctor at KKH after the assessment. Even though the doctor thinks that my girl is "okay", she still recommended me that i go through the following:

1) Hearing Test
Doctor said that she think my girl has no hearing problem, but "just to make sure" so better send her. I mean when i whisper to my girl, she can hear me loud and clear, obviously there is no issue with her hearing. It's not as if the test is free, I think it still cost about $50.

2) Next Step Workshop
Me and my hb went to the workshop, totally clueless what to expect. Turn out that during that so-called "workshop" they are trying to get parents to sign up some "Parenting course". And the course is $500+ for 1 week. Waste of our time.

3) Speech Therapy
I was expecting that the doctor schedule my girl for some speech therapy. In the end they scheduled us Parents / Caregiver to attend some course on how to help your child with speech problem. Their methodology is that "helps starts at home". Besides that, nothing else is schedule for my child. I have yet to attend the course (which cost $16 per pair of parents, no kids allowed).

4) Occupational Therapy
Initially I thought that Occupational Therapy will cover speech therapy. After making a call to KKH to find out more about this OT, I was told that it is mainly gross motor skills improvement. I asked the KKH staff nurse why was my girl schedule for this therapy, she said according to the doctor's diagnosis report (which they are suppose to give me but did not) my girl has difficulty climbing stairs. Funny thing is, during the assessment at the doctor's clinic, my girl was not tested on stairs climbing. There are no steps for her to climb in the doctor's room, so how did the doctor derived such diagnosis i really don't know. Anyway my girl can climb stairs unaided with no issues (though she's climbing slowly at her own pace, is this an issue or not I'm not sure though)

5) Recommended her for Eipic centre
This the doctor did not explain why she want to recommend Eipic for my girl.

Anyway a few weeks after the assessment at KKH, I spoke to my girl's teacher again. This time they told me that due to too many students in the class, they actually adopt "peer tutoring". Which means the teacher put my girl under some other "smarter" kids in her class and did not really monitor her. So when my girl is not doing her worksheet, they thought that she does not know how to do it. But after talking to me, the teacher started to put my girl directly under her care, and she realized that my girl actually knows a lot of things except that she does not speak out if not being called. So teacher thought that she does not know.

Now I really don't know if there is anything wrong with my girl. At first teacher said she's not okay...now they said she's okay. Then doctors feel she's okay, but still put her through all those non-relevant test. What should I do? Should I still put my girl through all these?

Sounds like your daughter is ok. The problem is that some teachers tend to compare with the ideal and don't have a wide range of tolerance. Same with some doctors. N2 is how old? Some kids don't get all the consonant sounds clear till 7 yo. And few kids are that keen on worksheets at N2!

I agree with point 3 that parents are the best teachers for young kids. Speak clearly to her to model good speech, and give her time to respond. As long as she knows what to aim for, her muscle coordination will catch up eventually. Baded on your description she sounds fine.