apps to help speech for a 2 year old

twigpig

After reading the post about when to buy a child a tablet, some comments were around using tablets etc to help speech development.

My son is almost 2, but isn't talking yet (no mama, dada, la la la, ba ba ba noises even) and is hadn't occurred to me to use the ipad to help. He has no interest in it at present.

He has seen a speech therapist twice already, but they can't do much this early, but did check his hearing and it's all ok.

Can anyone recommend any apps that we could use? Someone mentioned flash card apps or should I just buy some flash cards. Never though of this until now.

Any advice appreciated

Acc72

I am not sure how an app would help with your 2 year olds speech development ?

Surely it would be better to speak, read and generally communicate with them whilst working alongside and taking advice from the speech therapist.

elsien

How does he indicate what he wants at the moment? If he's gesturing and you're responding or anticipating what he's likely to asking for, then speech and babbling aren't serving any purpose for him at the moment.
Perhaps you could use that as an in to encourage him to start making noises?

Mojisola

elsien wrote: »

How does he indicate what he wants at the moment? If he's gesturing and you're responding or anticipating what he's likely to asking for, then speech and babbling aren't serving any purpose for him at the moment.

As elsien says - if there's no physiological reasons why he can't speak, it would be worth trying to get him to vocalise what he wants. My friend's youngest wasn't talking because his older siblings knew what he wanted and "translated" for the adults. The doctor they saw said to make him say what he wanted. He very quickly started talking.

If it doesn't happen quite quickly, there may be something more behind it which will need further investigation.

twigpig

elsien wrote: »

How does he indicate what he wants at the moment?

He doesn't.... he doesn't point yet and he doesn't babble or tantrum - I guess the closest would be making a whinge-y sound whilst grabbing maybe at my top or something, but we don't know what he wants. We obviously talk and point, and provide choice to make him choose, try to get him to nod yes etc, but nothing as yet.

twigpig

Acc72 wrote: »

Surely it would be better to speak, read and generally communicate with them whilst working alongside and taking advice from the speech therapist.

We're absolutely doing this - he actually love books and we read with him several times a day, he turns the pages, open flaps etc, and we'll be back to see the speech therapist in a few months, but was just curious what else we could do to bring him along as part of playing..........

brians_daughter

Hi, I mentioned on the thread that our son had speech delay and we used an ipad and various apps to aid his communication.
I cant recall the apps names now, but will find out once home from work. It was, for us, more about communication rather than developing speech. He was very frustrated in nursery and around siblings and peers as unless someone was looking directly at him they could miss his gestures.

The apps helped us massively. For example. DS would want to bring something to my attention etc so he would go to his app and press the picture of the object he wanted (we also used flash cards but the app actually said the words). You could programme the app too, so say your child is called Leo you could programme it so Leo touched the ball and the app spoke 'Leo would like the ball please'. If Leo touched the ball and a picture of one of his siblings (you could upload stuff to it) it would say 'Leo would like 'x' to play ball' We started small ie just 'ball' and worked up.

It really did give him a voice. It did help with his speech too by using other programmes but the most important and massive change we saw was his behaviour changed dramatically as he wasn't as frustrated and finally had a 'voice' even if it was spoken via an ipad.

Mojisola

twigpig wrote: »

He doesn't.... he doesn't point yet and he doesn't babble or tantrum - I guess the closest would be making a whinge-y sound whilst grabbing maybe at my top or something, but we don't know what he wants. We obviously talk and point, and provide choice to make him choose, try to get him to nod yes etc, but nothing as yet.

I would be concerned that he's not gesturing at this stage.

LEJC

MY son was quite late in speaking and when it came it came thick and fast!!!

go with the recommendations of the speech therapist but we were encoraged at that age to help him make sounds...gently tapping his mouth with our hands and showing how to make a sound and interating as much as we could with him to make speech and sound a natural thing.

In our experience there was nothing better than some quality one to one time with him gently coaxing out sounds....that doesnt come from any app in my opinion sorry!

it is a slow process and you cant always judge him against his peers in terms of reaching certain milestones at certain times. but regular mentioning to the health visitor etc should mean that he is monitored

Its also worth remembering not to stress yourself about the situation,small children can pick up on when you are anxious and that in turn will make them flustrated...try and keep it simple and enjoyable and the sounds will come I am sure...
does he respond to tickling and laughter,is he alert around you and follow talking and conversations with his eyes and body language etc....

twigpig

Mojisola wrote: »

........ it would be worth trying to get him to vocalise what he wants. My friend's youngest wasn't talking because his older siblings knew what he wanted and "translated" for the adults. The doctor they saw said to make him say what he wanted. He very quickly started talking.

He's not yet saying ba ba ba or la la la, let alone mama or dada, I can't see how we'll get any words from him as he simply doesn't even have the basic sounds yet. I'll definitely make sure he doesn't get lazy if/when he starts pointing at what he wants....

Mojisola

twigpig wrote: »

He's not yet saying ba ba ba or la la la, let alone mama or dada, I can't see how we'll get any words from him as he simply doesn't even have the basic sounds yet. I'll definitely make sure he doesn't get lazy if/when he starts pointing at what he wants....

Mojisola wrote: »

I would be concerned that he's not gesturing at this stage.

As my later post said - I would concerned that he hasn't reached this earlier stage yet.