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?

This morning I spoke with an Education Psychologist. It was eye opening and has sealed the deal for us - we're forging ahead with Reception. Nursery have also urged us not to delay her. Ed Psych said if we had come to him describing DD with a combination of: having trouble socially; toileting being an issue; tantrums when being asked to stop doing something; ability to plan and carry out a task was generally fraught and focus was not great then he would recommend she be delayed. As DD has good attention and focus and can sit through a task; she's toilet trained and has multiple friends from nursery starting nursery with her then he feels allowing her to progress to reception and keeping her with her age group in a structured learning environment will be the best thing for her. Also taking into account her rate of progression in the last year, funnily enough soon after she started nursery is when she bloomed. We're aware there will be struggles particularly with phonics with DD's speech delay and high frequency hearing loss, but we will work with the school to keep tabs on her classroom focus and keep working with her ourselves.

Thank you so much for all your input it has helped immensely Last night my husband and I were feeling pretty heavy hearted about this and we now feel far more positive.

*starting school with her from nursery that should read!

Good for you OP, and for your dd. I’m glad you’re feeling more positive, and fwiw, I think you’re making the right choice.

DGS had a very noticeable speech delay. A month at school and his speech had escalated to almost age appropriate.

@Summerwetordry What great progress by your DGS! Great to hear thank you

I work with children with SLCN in mainstream schools. We get almost all the ones with speech sound difficulties sorted by the end of year 1!
Does she have a teacher of the deaf?

@Elisheva I love the positivity! Are you a classroom TA or are you assigned by the LA to visit schools? Yes DD has a ToD who visits every 4ish months. The visits are a little chaotic and it is usually unclear what she wants DD to do. I find myself needing to interrupt to ask what we're doing to then explain it to DD. A year ago ToD was initially providing support and advice in getting DD to wear her hearing aids but now DD wears them very well and about one year later now i'm still unsure what ToD's role is intended to be with each visit.

I work for the LA.
The TOD should be advising the school on the best ways to support your dd, including making sure that the environment is communication friendly, reducing background noise, making sure she’s sat in the best place, use of amplification etc. She should also be advising on specific ways to support your dd’s learning, for example lots of HI students benefit from the use of cued articulation when teaching phonics.
The SLT should be setting targets for the school, and you, to support your dd’s language and speech development. In my area the NHS SLT visit once per term.

My friend did with her August born ds, kept him in nursery but then the pandemic came, she couldn't open her business & had a year at home with him, he has been at school for a year now & while he still has problems, he is flourishing & coming on well.

@PeanutButterCrumpets
Im a firm believer in children learning from other children. Some DC arrive with no English at all. Yet they learn from their peers. They accelerate when they get a variety of input. She has friends and she will make good progress in a friendly group. The EP has given you the best advice.

Couldn't agree more @TizerorFizz - I think keeping DD in nursery would be doing a disservice to her. She is right on the cusp of ticking that last box (full speech) and a structured learning environment and being exposed daily to fully speaking children will do her the world of good

DD2 had minimal intelligible speech when she started reception (I'd peg it as me understanding about 25% of it - and I'm her mother) - late March birthday though. She'd really outgrown her nursery setting and was ready to move on - started with her cohort and bloody hell did I wibble about Reception (moved school choice as a very last minute thing - which was definitely the right thing to do as she had an amazing Reception teacher) but she was fine - cracked reading well (reads at greater depth as a general rule - although the pandemic did knock that back a bit) and phonics surprised me in presenting minimal issues with her.

Now she has a number of additional diagnosis and still somewhat quirky speech at times, but she's more than held her own academically - socially was harder but there's an autism diagnosis there now, and we had issues with a bunch of the mothers who only wanted their kids to be friend with their mates' kids and would actively work to exclude others - we've moved to a much smaller school now and it's much better (things went tits up on transfer to the juniors).

One thing I'll mention though is that we were OK initially but as the language processing demands have increased as she's got older - it's become evident that there's other issues there in terms of attention and processing and autistic monotropic focus - and it's something we've had to keep a fairly watchful eye on as she can easily be overestimated in terms of if something's gone in between the ears or if it's drifted off and been hijacked by thoughts of teddy bears doing ballet dances on pink unicorns or the other nonsense that goes on in that little brain (she's nosing at me typing this and now laughing cos she knows exactly what little head I'm referring to)

We delayed DS. He's nine now, oldest in the year and perfectly happy. He's hitting all his targets and thriving.

It was the best thing we ever did.

I think your DD will probably get access to more support in Reception than she would at nursery.
DD is 14 and in Y9. Age 9 she had severe DLD. Her receptive and expressive language was at 0.1 percentile. We had to fight for a mainstream secondary place. She didn't even fit into tables. She could read well but futher investigation revealed she was just great at decoding.
I often think about nursery and primary years. Our nursery fought for a language unit place but like you, we had trouble with EHCP. It took us years to be heard and supported but I still don't think I would've held her back. Her secondary school (mainstream) has been absolutely amazing, she's just recently been re tested and scored in the 70th percentile. She's now only moderate in expressive language. The rest is now mild. She has an EHCP but NHS provision is crap tbh. We have dealt with many a SALT over the years both private and NHS and I have found they are often in the extremes. Your child is either fine and needs nothing or they are absolutely not going to improve.

The biggest help was positive peer pressure and brilliant English teachers. I think reception will be great for your DD. She will be able to mirror off other kids and will have access to much much more. You can always request to keep her back later if it's not working out but I would no doubt send her. Also, in our experience it's much easier to get an EHCP once the child is 5 and has been in reception for a term or so.

Just to add though, there is no doubt that holding them back is the perfect thing sometimes. Its great this is now an option. I've only ever heard it going well when it was the parents wholehearted want. You know your DD best at this stage. Not her test results. If you had met my DD 3 years ago 'on paper' you'd think she doesn't speak. She could speak fine. After fighting for a mainstream school she's now in a great friendship group, happy and set to start 9 GCSES in Sept.
I'd trust your gut as either choice can be perfect or awful.

Did you appeal the EHCP refusal? The majority of appeals are upheld.

i see you’ve settled on a choice. The only thing I was going to suggest is asking how the class would be distributed by age. I’ve got a summer born who is ahead but even she noticed the difference between some of the things she could do and the autumn born girls (class was heavily weighted towards Sept-Oct babies). This evened out but has been the case for writing/fine motor skills in particular and first term she took a bit of a confidence dive. 9-10 months at that age makes such a difference and it’s one thing being a summer born in a class with a range of ages but another when 70% of your peers are Sept-November.

@Meadowbreeze Appreciate this, ty! We're on speech therapist #4 at the moment - its been a struggle to find a satisfactory one let alone a good one. I'm now informed of what concepts DD needs to know and am teaching her myself. She's doing great and totally agree being in a school environment will do her so much good absorbing and learning from the other kids. We're very excited for her!

@PeanutButterCrumpets no problem. I think you will find with time, you will be your DDs best SALT. If you want to work with her over the summer, trugs games are great for kids with dyslexia but especially with language issues. The trugs pics game is great as is the home set, they are both pricey though. Also, dancing bears and apples and pears are incredibly helpful in starting reading and writing. They are the same system most schools now use for phonics and writing so your DD could get a head start. We got into a habit of asking DDs teacher for a vocab list of words for each half term and learning them with her in half terms in fun ways. Esp maths and topic vocab. It can be very difficult with maths. Nothing but boring old rote learning helped tbh.

I won't lie, it's going to be an exhausting journey and at times it's really annoying when you see kids just swanning through school doing great with no help but than its amazing when they go over that obstacle and you feel so fulfilled.

Reception teacher here. This year we had quite a large number of children with speech & language issues. 3 I was quite concerned about. We had interventions planned, however due to staffing we were unable to carry them out.
However all children have made incredible progress and are now all communicating and expressing themselves clearly. Only one of them is not at the expected level in some areas, but they are also July born so not necessarily linked to speech.
Just had to share my experience as an early years practitioner!

Yep this sounds about right - NHS SALT is absolutely overloaded to beyond breaking and now the demand is getting nuts for private services as well - we had to wait months for an assessment report on DD2 - frustrating as hell, even more so since the assessment used was one I'm very familiar with myself but couldn't use on my own child!

I wouldn't delay but would be pushing for what they used to call an ISP to make sure they do SLT support at school..do they know about her hearing ? There is specific support for children with hearing issues although she may not be complex enough loss ....look up sensory support on your council website
Slt isn't necessarily a need for an ehcp...if they think she hasn't other understanding needs..
Has she been seen by the local paediatric team?
SLT is often about training the parents rather than directly with the child tgese days but schools can alsi be trained....talk to the Senco at the school
I would generally go with getting into school and then just pushing a lot (squeaky wheel) if she is going to need support they are tge place to get her help and the paperwork done..
Especially as her nursery says not to delay..
Find your local parents carer forum and SENDIASS ours really useful when making sure the LA/school did what they should

Be careful with SENDIASS, some are good but too many repeat the LA’s unlawful policies. IPSEA and SOSSEN are better.

I had similar issues to your DC. My response is based on personal experience. I had speech therapy from 2 years old until I started reception. The most important thing is that you continue SLT and practice with your child. An extra year is nursery isn't necessary going to help your child catch up because DC doesn't have any learning disabilities. The delayed speech is mostly likely due to the hearing loss. It is more likely than not they will catch up. This probably will happen in the next year or two - give or take. I would continue fighting EHCP and what ever else your child is entitled to including any benefits. All the best.

Hi just wondering how your daughter is getting on now @PeanutButterCrumpets my daughters speech sounds similar and also has a history of hearing loss. She's in reception now also summer born (may) I was expecting her speech to be better once started school but the progress has stopped and I'm now deciding if I should still fight to keep her in mainstream or to try and fight for a special school (she has an ehcp) but feel like the TAs don't have enough knowledge of SALT and although they are trying there best no progress. Xx @@