Understanding delay

[Jackleila14]

Hi, it seems that my ds 2.4 is on the path to being diagnosed with autism but I was just wondering if any ones dc understanding improved with age? My ds can say his colours, shapes, numbers to 10 and some animals and foods ect but doesn’t understand simple commands/ names of people or how to say yes or no to something. I would love for a bit of hope that one day I can say something like “do you want lunch” or “take your shoes off” and he will understand what I mean and respond.

Hi. You are welcome to search my posts on here I’ve been posting for years. Ds couldn’t understand anything (knew shapes alphabet could count as you say) but couldn’t answer yes or no until after age 4 he didn’t understand basic instructions.

He can now, (nearly 7) he argues the toss with me now.

Sorry I don’t have much time to post today but you will see from my older posts the progress he’s made (still has lots of delays) but not as bleak as it once was.

Thank you so much I’ll have a look now. Most parents don’t like it when their toddlers scream and say no but I can’t wait for that day.

Oh yes, with the right support , they improve.

Our son could hardly string a sentence together at 3. I remember being very excited the day he said, "Look Mummy, tortoise got a hat on." Seven words then was amazing. He had a lot of speech and language therapy which helped, but he was discharged from the SLT service when he was 9 as they supposedly couldn't do any more for him. .

If I'd known then what I know now, I'd have tried to find the money for private SLT as what they really meant was there was no funding to support him any longer.

When he went to a specialist college many years later, he started having SLT again and he made a huge amount of progress, so much so, that we actually have proper conversations now, rather than being talked at or us having to keep the conversation going.

Will have a look at what SLT is . I haven’t had any help yet other than one half an hour speech Therepy session, I’m waiting on an appointment with paeds in nov which I’ve been fighting for for over a year. I’ve been trying every thing the speech therepist suggested and learning makaton and trying to get as much information as I can but some days if we stay home I just feel like I’m alone even when I’m with him here because he can’t understand me and I’m starting to get really down about it .

I agree with previous comments, the likelihood is that it will improve with time. Don't forget that children with autism learn just like any other child would learn but normally on their own individual learning curves and not on "expected" learning curves. As they get older they tend to catch up on missed skills like understanding, verbal, pointing, etc.

Some helpful ideas for activities were posted on this thread by Checklist three years ago.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/3106921-Receptive-language-delay?msgid=73911297#73911297

And sorry SLT is Speech and Language Therapy which it sounds as though you're already accessing.

Oh I see, well they signed him off after one session even though the comments they made to hv were that he has a speech delay and significant understanding delay, she couldn’t understand why he was signed off and it took me ages to get him seen in the first place and even then it was only over the phone due to covid . Will have a look at the list of activities, thank you!

Ds has a language disorder and receives no salt. He is moving to special school shortly we are just waiting on a placement and I know they have an on site salt so I’m certain he will receive therapy then but the nhs for us has been abysmal. They send school a few sheets every 6 months because he has an ehcp and think that is satisfactory. They discharged him twice and we have been referred back, the actual therapists Ds has seen are about as old as my teenage sister.

We did pay a private salt for 2 sessions in 2018 but she was taking the piss charging £100 for an hour & all she did was what we do at home and complain she couldn’t keep his attention (5 yr old at the time with asd & adhd) she spent most of the time talking to ME.

There’s a lot you can do at home yourself, the best website I have found out of the ones I’ve seen over the years is Laura mize teach me to talk. I am still interested enough to read her email updates 5 years on. It’s all completely free and she is very knowledgable.

I had to manually teach ds to answer yes and no questions.

This is how I did it,

Basically I use to say to ds (for example) he had paw patrol pyjamas on, I would point to his pyjamas and say is this peppa pig?. NO! Silly mummy. Is this Thomas the tank? NO! Silly mummy, is this (insert every single character but the correct one being as silly as you can emphasising the NO!) then get to paw patrol and say is this paw patrol? Yes! Clever mummy! Yes paw patrol! It’s all about emphasising the yes and no really dramatically.

Took a while and I use to do it in as many situations as possible, but ds really did start understanding yes and no after this. (He was about 4 maybe a bit older)

Rubbish that you’ve had such a pants experience with getting help too especially since now your son is diagnosed now I was kind of hoping things would improve then . I do think the best way is to learn as much as you can yourself to support them but I felt as though I’d hit a bit of a wall. Thanks for the suggestions especially the one for getting him to say yes and no I’ve never tried that and think it would definitely help. I feel like I need to say my son is amazing and smart in so many ways and I adore him and enjoy spending time with him just some times I have a bad day and worry about his development/ future. X