To think their targets are weird?

[NotJustKangaskhan]

Backstory: My son, 6, has a receptive language delay. I've been asking about his language since before he was 2 and finally got help when he was 5 through a HV of his sister. While his vocabulary has caught up (he didn't say more than 5 words before he was 2.5 and only used copied phrases until he was about 4), his usage of them is still lagging. His greatest problem is questions - he didn't use why until he was almost 6, and can't answer questions that are not clearly black and white in terms of answers (so you can ask him if he likes something, but ask him what he likes about it and he stares like a deer in headlights or blurt out anything off the top of his head which rarely had to do with the question). His hearing has been assessed, passed fine, and was diagnosed with receptive language delay late last year which basically means he hears what we say fine but his brain doesn't always give him the right tools to respond properly.

Now the weird. We finally got speech and language therapist help and she retested his language and agreed with the diagnosis. She set a few targets and he recieved weekly therapy for about a month. The targets have nothing to do with his problems and I feel like they were put there just to give him a target. His targets are using he and she and before and after correctly - two things that he does slip up on occasionally when talking, but don't really get in his way of communicating like his problems with questions.

His therapy pretty much consisted of games where he had a little boy and little girl and a bunch of pictures of items and my son had to say what 'he liked' and 'she liked' (and getting comments from the therapist like "I guess he could like the doll" "I guess she could like the computer/race car" and jokes made about my husband - who has a full beard - when my son didn't know what a razor was or who would like it when the picture was of an old fashioned straight razor). They would spend about 80%+ of the time on she/he and the remainder of before and after. No time was spent on his main issues and I've just gotten very frusterated with the whole process and decided not to pursue further help through them because they've admitted it would only be more of the same. I honestly don't give a monkey about his s/he slip-ups but that's where they spent most of their time and energy and talked about him not instantly knowing if a drawn picture of a character was a he or she (when the only difference between them is hair length) was some great sorrow for us when what I really want and have been asking for is help with him understanding questions and conversation skills.

AIBU to think their targets are weird and were picked just to show them doing something for him when really they've done nothing other than make him feel that boys can only like these things and girls these things? Does anyone have any advice on receptive langauge delay?

[TotalChaos]

I'ld repost this over on SN, as lots of us on there have experience of SALT and language delay.

In general, I'ld say don't be afraid to ask politely, why SALT if focusing on he/she, and certainly don't be afraid to ask SALT if she has any resource for working on the question words. When DS was a similar age he went to group therapy for a "narrative group", this was very useful for work on question words.