I am still fairly new to MN as this is my second post, but I have been lurking ever since I started worrying about my ds. Ds1 is 3 end of next month and he seems to only just made a HUGE breakthrough with his language.
He is able to ask for simple things without prompting, like open, banana, drink, jam bread (usually means he's hungry) and will say 'come' when he wants to play. He has a few 3 word sentences like open the door that he says without prompting and in context. He can name almost all colours (even brown, black and white), to my surprise, and can tell you his favourite animals characters when asked 'who is this?" And can answer correctly when asked 'whats this?' E.g flower, ladybird etc. He can also pretty much say anything with a prompt and he doesn't just repeat for the sake of it, overtime he will understand and no longer need to be promted.
All this is fantastic as months ago he could barely say anything and when i wrote my last post he had a handful of words he would say bit would always need promting. We have started him on a ABA programme as I initially had concerns about ASD (Will explain further) but even when those thoughts went away over time I still could see his lack of language was affecting his social interaction with other kids, and the intensive nature of ABA therapy appealed to me.
The therapy has been going really well though he has only been having it for just over 2 weeks. The consultant who sets his targets is very pleased with him and also says he is having a "language explosion". Overall I've seen rapid progress and I'm so proud of him. It's just today I went to his Useless nhs salt, and we had a small session with her and I informed her his therapist would be visiting her family abroad and won't be here all December so I wanted to know what to do in the meantime.
She wrote down a woman's name and told me to do her attention building activities with him, only issue is as soon as I googled it this woman specialises In autism. That is completely fine as I have come to know that autism and speech and language difficulties look very similar at his age and the treatment is more or less the same (hence opting for ABA without a dx) but what I don't understand is why she didn't mention it? Or write it on the paper. She completly missed the word out!! This has got me thinking again, is there something I'm missing? I'm finding it incredibly difficult to pinpoint what attributes, are normal toddler behaivours, possible asd, language difficulties or any other factors really.. So to be pointed in the right direction from these professionals would be a great help!! His not having ASD is not the issue here, it's me wearing all these hats mum/salt/aba tutor that's draining ME.
The salt session went well in terms of him "talking" (saying words) and "attending" (I have no idea how as she is the most boring human I have come across in life). But his attention was not good if he had no interest and would just leave her and show me something else he found nice. In his defence though he did just have 3 hours of ABA that morning, the missed his lunch (no time just had a snack and bannana) and also missed his nap.
I also made it clear that we speak in no longer than 3 word sentences to him as he has a hard time understanding language (well he did, he understands everything now as long as you keep it simple) yet she did not, I mean as a salt should I be telling you this? Sometimes I strip it all the way back to 2 word sentences if it's a new concept for him. AIBU to say i took nothing away fro. The appointment other than worrying again, and nothing productive came out of it
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I feel none of these professionals have experience with children who have a delay in receptive language as well as expressive, this is why I always tag @lingle as her past threads have got me through some dark times. Don't get me wrong all children are beautiful gifts from god, and asd (though it can be hard to wrap your head around as a parent at first) is not the be all and end all! But i just want the help my ds needs there are so many different types of sn and at his young age I really need a medical professional to let me know what the red labels might be as I can then help him.
Thank you if you managed to get through this long post, any thoughts are welcome