Re: Speech Delay help

Beth Kevles wrote:
> For what it's worth, my older son was in a nursery school class of 9
> 2-year olds, all with birthdays in a very narrow (3 month) range. At
> the start of the school year, with all the kids just hitting 24-26
> months, only four children spoke more than a few single words.
> (Interestingly, three of the early speakers were at the younger end of
> the age range.) By the end of the school year, with the kids all
> about 33-35 months old, all of them had exploded with language and
> were really speaking. The same children were together for the next
> two years, and as far as I know there were no obvious language
> difficulties for any of them.

It is so tricky, this language thing :-) I have two boys. Both were like
you describe at 24mos. There was the language explosion for one, but not
the other. He eventually got some therapy, later then he should have had
it. There were subtle differences that really stick out to me now but
didn't then. Had their birth order been different (the older one was the
one that had the trouble) I would have probably noticed it. For example
the one with the language problem had the same number of words, but he
hardly ever used them. He didn't repeat animal sounds. He babbled when he
was a baby but as he got older he didn't 'play' with his voice or sounds the
way my second son did. He hardly ever repeated a word or sound for us. He
never interjected a word or sound into a book we were reading him (which we
did constantly).

> The teachers all seemed to think that every one of the kids was
> perfectly normal in their language development.

The teachers thought he was just shy and that is why he didn't ever talk to
them. He did talk more at home but in hindsight he was not where he should
have been. They had a batch of students come in and he completely failed
his hearing screening which is what led us to eventually get therapy. It
turns out his hearing is just fine but he just wasn't responding to the
students ;-) Either way, it was a good thing as he was way way way behind
in both receptive and expressive language when we had him evaluated at 3yo.
Therapy did help him a lot. As a bigger kid language is just not his thing.
He rarely rarely sings, has no interest in nursery rhymes (never repeats
them), is having a hard time with reading, etc. He has had further testing
as a kindergartener and this points to an auditory processing delay but he
is to young to test for that specifically. As a first grader his teachers
notice mostly the great difficulty he has paying attention and staying
focused. It is hard to say if that is an attention problem or a symptom of
auditory processing difficulties. He's only 6yo and I think in the next
couple of years they will be able to pin point that better.

A very long winded way of getting to my point that I take the language thing
very seriously because I regret not getting Hunter evaluated much sooner.
The testing and evaluation are so easy and fun for the kid. Language has
such a huge impact on one's life. I would certainly recommend that you
(general you - not you specifically ;-) see a therapist in real life though
as there are many faucets to language and it takes a professional to see
each individual child to really know what is going on.

--
Nikki
Hunter 4/99
Luke 4/01
Thing One and Thing Two :-) EDD 4/06


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: the N word
    ... language into positive language because a vast majority of people have ... I'm sorry but we're talking about a school setting, ... kids need to know the difference. ... You're trying to dictate which songs they like. ...
    (rec.music.hip-hop)
  • Re: Camping at high tide
    ... groups have their own idiosyncratic sociolinguistic patterns used ... behavior and language use. ... American kids were calling each other by 'the N word' I would not find it ... but while at school they shouldn't use ...
    (alt.tv.survivor)
  • Re: The Kremlin pukes.....
    ... The sudents knew Latvian better than ... science teachers, not language teachers." ... You're in good company to question the changes in minority education, ... the actual law passed in 1998 called for high school ...
    (soc.culture.baltics)
  • Re: The importance of Fruit and Vegetable Juices in your Diet
    ... and the teacher repeatedly told him he didn't have time to ... after school to answer questions. ... other kids were complaining, too. ... if perhaps her own language skills were preventing her from seeing some ...
    (rec.gardens)
  • Severe restrictions on teaching Mon language
    ... Severe restrictions have been placed in the teaching of the Mon ... language by the military regime at high and middle school levels. ... The NMSP spokesperson said Burmese authorities don't want to allow ...
    (soc.culture.burma)