by sarah » Sat Nov 10, 2001 10:46 pm
Hi,
Our son had both a cleft lip and palate. His speech also seemed slow in commin to us, but again, given he was a) a boy and b) a second child, we didn't worry too much. Then, out of the blue, the words, sentences just kept on coming. He's now 2.5 years old and can sing Twinkle Twinkle Little star - to name one song. I would say his first batch of real words started around 20 months (yes he was babbling before, but no real words).
We are lucky because his speech has been assessed every 3 months since he turned about 18 months old. So we always had a good idea of how he was doing from the experts.
As for funny sounding speech, not at all. I have been told that the earlier the cleft palate repair is done, then the less the liklihood of speech problems later. I would have thought that funny sounding speech could only happen in children with physical abnormalities inside their nasal cavaty ie cleft palate. I can't see how a cleft lip alone would impact speech.
Sarah