We got the brush off from several directions when I was still asking about these things at 34 months. 36 months is the magic age when you get the attention of a ped. If you get the brush off, see if you can consult with a speech and hearing center or university language lab.
This is so true! And 36 months is a very big deal (at least it is where we're at) because that's the age at which a child is no longer eligible for EI but instead has to go through the school district for speech etc evals. In our area, it's easier to get into EI than into speech therapy etc through the school district... so another reason to seek help early.
FWIW, you don't have to have a ped's referral for EI or for a school district eval (at least we don't - I don't know if it's the same everywhere). And there are sometimes long waits - but there are also official timelines and deadlines for how quickly either EI or the school district must respond when a parent makes a request for an eval, so the best thing to do if you want to go through EI is to ask for an veal now and if in the meantime you meet with your ped and decide that everything's ok, you can cancel the EI appointment.
Outside of EI and the school district, we found we couldn't get into evals for speech/hearing/etc by private professionals or our children's hospital etc without a referral from a ped. When our ds was older we were able to, but when our kids were preschool age and younger we definitely had to have referrals just to get on waiting lists.
polarbear
