Would you delay reception for a child with a non-trivial speech delay?

[PeanutButterCrumpets]

DD will be 4 this month (June) and due to start Reception this September. Her speech is roughly that of a 2 year old. If it helps to know, didn't say a word prior to 3. Her expressive word count now is around 150 - 200 at most and her Receptive understanding can stretch to "can you get mummys keys please", or "leave your hat in the car" for example and she understands straight away. She is stringing mini phrases together (cold outside, big dog, help mummy, daddy working) and we are working on her pronunciation which is quite slurred - its difficult to determine what she is saying most of the time. Apart from her speech we have no suspicions of any other SN's and she is a cluey kid with a great memory and good attention span. FYI I was denied an EHCP assessment (not a compelling enough need they said) and separately DD has a mild high frequency hearing loss and is aided in both ears for this. Our speech therapist who has only so far spoken to me and not worked with DD is virtually ordering me to delay her purely based on her speech delay. It's thrown me right back into doubt as I was all set to send her into Reception this September. Nursery disagree about delaying her but i'm wondering what happens after reception (year 1+) when theres less play and more focus on academics. Maybe she'll have caught up by then... but maybe not. So my question: Did your DC have a speech delay and how did they fare in school? Did you have to hold them back during any years following Reception?

@PeanutButterCrumpets severe was the term the paediatrician used, at aged 4 there was barely any speech you can recognise, at 4.5 he was becoming more understandable maybe 50% of the time you could understand him and it really was the right time for him to move onto school, is it possible for you to talk to the senco at your school and ask him/her to come and meet DD?

Oh and I just remembered ECHP 's often turned down in the first instance and usually overturned on appeal, there is a lot of information about that on the special needs board.

@Kite22 So many thanks for this. These are our thoughts exactly - her rate of progression is such that she may be caught up in not too long. Totally agree there will be kids of such varying abilities. Going to speak with the school and get their opinion before we make a final decision.

My lad had fairly severe speech and language difficulties, school really helped him, though he had extra help from a TA who also worked with him on tasks set by his speech therapist, but I think he learned more from his peers tbh, children can communicate in so many ways even with no words said.
But if you're concerned you could start him part time at school and work up to regular hours as soon as you're both comfortable?

@PeanutButterCrumpets My DS at 4 was barely any words with people he didn't know, but when he was with close family he could manage short sentences (probably 5 words).

When DS started in Reception he barely spoke to anyone, and often played on his own, but his confidence has built up over the year, and he's really quite chatty now (just turned 5).

His speech really only started coming at 3.5 years.

Just to say my DS1 got very minimal speech therapy However I have some experience so took on the 'teaching him to talk' after advice from the SALT. Luckily I was on maternity leave so could really focus on it.

DD, summer born, started school at 4 with incomprehensible speech, she was referred to SLT in her first week. She had pretty much no speech that was understandable to outsiders. But she had some signing, communicated well and understood complex instructions.
We didn't consider holding her back, at the time I chose to send her as I felt it was the only way to get support, we'd been constantly fobbed off by GPs, HVs and nursery. Plus she was ready to move on from nursery.

She settled well. She did struggle with reading as it was entirely phonics based and she couldn't replicate the sounds. But she did catch up. Fortunately we live somewhere where there are no SATs, so she wasn't disadvantaged by taking her time to learn. She's an older teen now and passed 12 GCSEs at high grades, so no issues with learning.

If I had the chance again, I would maybe hold her back, not in any way because of her speech though. But because she has always seemed young emotionally compared to her peers and I think it would have helped her socially to have waited a year.

Its a tricky call.
Being in school will bring on her language development as she will be in a rich language environment and be exposed to a much broader range of vocabulary and types of language. Her older peers will be giving her a good language model, and the focus on phonics will help her to develop her speech sounds.
She will probably struggle in some areas and will require extra support to develop her language skills. It would be interesting to ask the school how they are planning to do this? Do they run NELI, as this would be perfect. She will need support with phonological awareness skills and may initially find reading tricky as children with speech sound difficulties find blending/segmenting hard.
For what its worth in some schools that I work in over half of the children start school with language skills below 3 years old. Her needs are by no means unusual and a competent school should have no trouble supporting her.
The most important influence is parental input. As you are aware and involved she will be fine whichever route you choose.

We're in Wales and apparently it's now ALN instead of SEN here, I'm learning as I go along!!

The outreach thing is this....
adyach.cymru/en/Parents/Services/Additional-Learning-Needs/Early-Years/Early-Years-Observation-and-Assessment-ABC.aspx

They send a specialist TA or teacher out once a week or once a fortnight to do a 1:1 session with DD, this teacher then completes all the developmental assessments which get uploaded on a profile that all professionals involved (playgroup key worker, teacher, SALT) and myself have access to.

We are really lucky to have her in such a lovely small school. I have found on MN that people seem to look down on any school with less than a 2 form entry. However DDs school is amazing, and the kindness and support she gets from the older kids is incredible. I dropped her in late one day and it was end of break time when the kids were suppose to be lining up but several of the older kids broke loose to come and hug DD at the gate, and she came home today with a bracelet made from those tiny coloured rubber bands that one of the older girls had made as a gift for her. No wonder she loves going to school so much!

Change of circumstances, we got an amazing nursery but then it was full for reception and then moved to a religious school for Y1 😅

Tbh our speech therapy sessions weren't what I expected. They mainly just talked to me, which I suppose that's what matters, I'm the one communicating with her all the time. Anyways, they were happy that she was progressing, that her vocabulary was steadily improving. We had no concerns otherwise.

There is a difference to the other kids. Of course, she's a sixth of their lives younger!!! It's a huge difference at this age but it does become less further on (I was the youngest in my class). She's doing well. We're not expecting her to be the best in the class but to be hard working and keep on progressing.

Her younger sister I think will have more pressure on her 😬 at nursery she's already reading a little bit

I think you should talk to the school, some are more able to support with SALT programmes than others, but as a SENCO, we often had children start school with SLT support, the therapist will visit them at school and give school a program and strategies to support.

My dd had a severe phonological disorder and is also a june baby. I think it depends on the confidence of the child. My dd is luckily a pretty resilient little thing and starting reception at 4 was the right thing. At times I felt sad for her eg when the teacher said he struggled to understand her, but she had her ways of explaining in other ways, so it actually was 'fine' and the right thing for my dd. It sounds like your dd's speech is more complex though.

DD's school is big (3 form entry) but that does mean they have money for support for SEN. She had NHS speech therapy and also mini sessions with a speech & language Ta who she loved.

I'm in the SE if you want to message about a private speech therapist recommendation (used while while waiting for nhs)

We wanted to delay for one child but for different reasons, request was refused, however, now higher in the school it has become apparent this was a mistake and deferring for 1 months would have been better in our case. getting the support needed has been an uphill battle and its taken so long that tbh support has come too late.

In relation to the hearing loss I would push for an EHCP it often isnt apparent till far too late how much information is missed. things like a deaf mentor, BSL lessons, x number of SALT visits year, a sound bar in the classroom, x minutes 1:1 or small group per a day to recap key points and teach specific vocabulary.

LA tactic is to refuse with the concept of we don't know if child will struggle - lets just wait and see how they do. then when the gap gets bigger as they go up the years they switch to they have coped for y years without support why would they need it now.
Deafness isnt a learning disability but adjustments are needed to ensure the child has full access to information. Without reasonable and appropriate adjustments deaf children do not meet their potential with on average deaf children achieving 1 grade below their hearing peers.

If you wish to PM me please do and I can sign post you to data and resources to help you gain the required support.

Sorry - error above for us deferring for a year would have been better but for different circumstances to yours.

I’m a Reception teacher and mum of summer borns who have started school in Reception at age 5, not 4. I would delay starting school for another year, even if it wasn’t for the speech delay. As others have said, children in this country start school too early and many people, I think, underestimate the benefits of simply playing (at home and at nursery/ pre school). Another year of play, maturing, working on speech and language etc can only be beneficial, surely? What’s the rush? School will still be there a year later. Yes it will hugely benefit her speech simply being in school amongst her peers and teachers but it’ll benefit her after another year at preschool too. And after another year, she will be further along speech wise and in maturity so in an even better position to benefit from the wonderful experience which is the reception year. She may well be ‘fine’ this September, but next year you’ll likely look back on her now and realise how much she has progressed in many ways, not just with her speech, and feel confident that she will be even more than ‘fine’.

This would be my main concern. My DD is in reception, and I’ve noticed a huge shift in her style of play. In nursery, there was a lot of physical play (toys, tag, races, etc). In reception, she plays a lot more imagination games with her friends, role-play type games, that require a lot of communication. I’d worry about how your DD would do socially.

There are also many (many!) multi-part instructions that the kids are given throughout the day. “Put on your shoes, your coat, and line up to go outside”; “take out your blocks and make a pattern in different colours”; “lie down on the paper and ask your friend to trace your outline, then colour in your different body parts”. I worry that if your DD is only just learning single-part instructions, she’ll become quickly overwhelmed.

In my view, reception is about learning the next level of social skills, developing a comfort with a school setting, and maybe starting on the foundations of literacy and numeracy. All of those things could be more challenging with a speech delay. I think I’d probably take the speech therapist’s advice. There’s truly no rush, and if the SLT can get your DD “on track” over a few months, your DD could have a really wonderful reception year next year rather than a potentially quite stressful and isolating one this year.

@RIPWalter That is just fantastic your DD is having such a positive start to her school life - it sounds like a particularly lovely environment there. Thanks for the link! I will see if my local authority have something similar! :)

@UpToMyElbowsInDiapers I appreciate all of this input and loved reading the examples you have given. DD will understand a good deal of that - it's her expressive ability that is behind more so than her receptive ability. She will understand "take off your coat and change your shoes" and as for lying on the floor and tracing eachother, she will understand "lay down" but the tracing part once demonstrated, she'll lock that word away and understand for next time. Her memory is good like that. You'r probably wondering why i'm deliberating so hard when I sound so confident now, as its her ability to verbalise thats very behind rather than her ability to understand.

@grey12 Think you nailed it - not expecting her to be the best in the class (now) but to keep progressing. That's all I hope for DD also whilst she's navigating this time of her life.

I think it is possible that with the hearing levels what she is processing and linking meaning to is different to what is being said and this is impacting her ability to be understood with vocalising she is doing and could become apparent later on as vocab would be expected to widen.
it is worth printing out a speech banana audiogram and laying this over her own audiogram. this will show you what speech sounds she has access to unaided in an ideal listening enviroment. in a noisy classroom noise is going to be amplified so even when aided she isn't going to have good access to all speech sounds. It would however be worth asking for an aided audiogram as this will indicate what sounds she will access in an ideal sound environment (hopefully similar to environment used for SALT.

As an example 'take off your coat and change your shoes' what she could be hearing is ' ay oa nd ayng oo' she has accessed those sounds in that order used at similar times ie when coming in from outside and witnessed others taking off coat and changing shoes so has learnt that those sounds mean do that. speech is a different ball game as if she uses those sounds in that order it means nothing to others even know to her she is repeating back the same sound pattern. how ever as more vocab is used there is the potential for confusion as same sounds will have different meanings and different enviroments different expectation. so 'Ay oa' without the 'nd ayng oo' may not be recognised by a child as take off coat especially in a different routine .

This is where visuals and sign language can help gain and develop language

DS September born, Scottish school system and deferred him from starting P1. Nursery staff were very supportive.

He had speech delay, got lots of NHS SaLT, private SaLT during summer holidays before starting P1 as well.

His speech is where it should be for his age (been discharged from school link SALT) and will be heading into P2 in a few months.

If your gut instinct is to defer, please do. Extra time to play is fantastic for there development and best of all takes away a lot of pressure.

Their* 🤦🏻

My Son has a severe speech delay and we kept him in preschool for another year. I regret this massively. He had a passive, inexperienced teacher who didn’t offer him any extra help or raise any red flags (in spite of my constant querying, she was actually quite dismissive) he’s now in reception and the teacher immediately raised a whole bunch of red flags and we are now in the process of applying for an ehcp. He has private speech therapy twice a week to try and help him catch up (which is costing us a fortune) and it still well behind in his class despite him being a year older than most.
I think staying in preschool for n extra year can be helpful providing they are getting the support they need to catch up, not if they’re being left to get on with it.

@Whatwouldyoudo41 if your Ds was in an extra year, was he put under the preschool/ nursery senco? Even at the private school my Ds attended the nursery staff where staff not qualified teachers. It was over seen by a qualified reception teacher, but she didn't work in there. So what I found was the level of knowledge is not at all the same with someone with a childcare qualification compared to a qualified school teacher. Ultimately I've even found it hard work with the teachers, as they often won't comment as they don't want to fend you, they just say the senco will review the child. Getting even that in our school is impossible, every child seem to have some additional needs and behavioral issues that disrupt the class seem priority.

Aw thanks @Shtfday I completely get your point - DD is fully aided in both ears (Hearing Aids) and Audiology test her every 3 months and tweak as needed. But yes that's exactly how the situation was prior to her having hearing aids. She would hear part of the word and the quieter F and TH etc sounds were not being accessed.