Is lingle around?

[Landladymews2]

Hi I was wondering if she is still around as o wanted to ask her about her DS1 and his receptive language delay. I hope she’s still around!

She posted on my thread a year ago when i was worried about my DS and his language delay / starting school - I think she said that she held her DS back a year from starting school but it all worked out well.

Thanks! I think I actually came across that post which was an update on her DS2. I was actually curious about her experience with her DS1 who she mentioned had a delay and eventually caught up. If I’m not mistaken lingle managed to sort out his receptive language issues and I would love to learn more about his profile and what she felt worked well if she’s around @lingle ?

I’m not lingle but wanted to post anyway.

My ds had a receptive language delay, he still does, as in not age appropriate but his understanding has improved loads over the years.

He didn’t understand basic instructions like ‘sit down’ or ‘put it in mummy’s hand’ he didn’t even know I was mummy and his dad was daddy, this was when he was about 3/4. He didn’t have a clue how to answer yes / no and didn’t understand how to communicate with us to get his most basic needs met.

When he started school at 4 and a half he still didn’t understand a great deal. He started with full time 1-1 support and she said to me the Christmas he started, we’ve been reading a book today and I asked him to point to the snowball in the book and he didn’t know what I was saying to him (he was a month off 5 at this point) bless him.

He’s coming up to 7 now and does understand all your basic type instructions and he’s getting there with understanding other bits.

He said to me this morning download me a plane game so I’m searching the App Store on his iPad for a plane game, I’m saying this one ds? he’s saying no not that one, no not that one. I scrolled past the one he wanted and he said back! back! mummy you missed the one I want.

Sounds simple enough to say he’s nearly 7 but I wouldn’t of ever thought that would of been possible how he was not really that long ago.

danni0509's post brings it all back :)

What's up OP?

Thank you for sharing your experience @danni0509 Glad you have had such great progress :)

@lingle Glad to see here! There is so little (close to nothing) online about kids with receptive language delays or even disorders. I was beginning to wonder if it’s at all possible to even have a receptive language delay that resolves with a bit of early intervention and it seems like it did for your DS1?

Just a bit of background so you know where I am coming from. My son is coming up to 18 months and I’ve only just picked up that he’s behind in understanding (no understanding of simple commands or words yet). I’m not overly concerned about autism as he comes out low risk on the Mchat - he’s very sociable and loves people and social games, great eye contact, gestures, joint attention, pointing etc. He’s developing fairly typically in most respects and there are no red flags except this receptive language issue. His main method of communication is to point and whine until he gets what he wants. His ears are clear of fluid and we are having a hearing test soon but I feel like his hearing is ok.

I’ve been listening to Laura Mize’s podcasts and whilst the advice is great I do feel a bit panicked. There’s clearly an issue if a child can’t understand by 18 months but if it’s not autism or hearing issues then I guess it’s either a cognitive issue, a language delay or disorder? I don’t think it’s cognitive as he can do age appropriate Problem solving tasks. I’m planning to get the teach me to listen and obey dvd, the Hanen book and maybe even engage an SALT but I do find implementing many of the strategies that get suggested with him very difficult because he seems pretty uninterested and non compliant eg if I repeat a word to try to get him to say it or or try to do hand over hand he gets annoyed or wonders off. I was recently reading a book on late talkers by Professor Stephen Camerata and in it he describes a little boy who was failing intelligence tests at the age of 3 because he would refuse to do them and do whatever he wanted instead. He told the parents that felt that he was too ‘immature’ to be tested for his intelligence. When he came back a few years later he was found to have slightly above average IQ. I know Laura Mize doesn’t believe that children ‘won’t’ and it’s that they ‘can’t’ but I’m not sure about that with my son. He walked late and only did it when we practically forced him by keeping his beloved milk away. He similarly didn’t start to pointing until we did the same with the milk. There were a lot of tears involved both times but now he won’t stop walking or pointing. It’s like he’s very comfortable with the way things are and has to be pushed to really make progress.

Anyway as I said there’s very little information out there on receptive language issues particularly in such young children. I don’t know if you also found that to be the case when you were looking? I think you started using single words and repeating them over and over? Could you tell me what age this was at and how long it took before you started to see some progress? How is your son doing now? Thank you!

Ah yes. Laura Mize was mortified when she found that mumsnet SN board had an "edited" version of her podcast because we simply found her comments too frightening and they made us angry! She came on here and apologised, have you seen the thread? She built up a practice with a different clientele to the mumsnet SN board and that impacted her tone. On a technical level Laura's list of stages was the best thing I found that sticks to language so I'm grateful for them.

For me, though, Laura's stages were more useful once I'd got more used to tuning in (and re-tuning in) to what was "really going on" with my emotions, with the DSs' world, with what they could-do-but-others-denied-it and with what they couldn't-do-but-I-wanted-to-tell-myself-they-could. This was, is and should be a work in progress because we are mothers and we are parenting, not doing experiments. I found this board very helpful for that, particularly some of the posters with profoundly disabled children (jimjamshaslefttheyurt), and particularly the shorter writings and online publications of Stanley Greenspan and his "floortime" approach. So improving the quality of my observations, acknowledging but not attempting to eliminate all the subjective emotions that I had, that my family had, the various agendas that those around me had, the "need" that professionals had to make us fit the box-that-happened-to-be-in-favour-that-year.

Where does your Camerata point take you? Is it that you have some doubts about the best approach?

Hanen will help you "clear the ground" of less effective strategies that you may be employing and for me is its great gift. It greatly increases the chances that you will then identify and push at stuff that needs pushing but without disrupting your relationship/pleasure in him.

To answer your direct question, my older son at 18 months literally didn't grasp that words aren't just music, that they do work. So repeating them helped.

Thanks so much. At this point I’m really trying to explore what the issue could be and what it could mean in the long run.

There’s a lot online about how a receptive language issue at 18 months is a cause for concern but very little about what that means if it’s not hearing or autism related. Camerata mentions in his book that there are many late talkers who go on to be absolutely fine but there is not as much documented about these children because the parents forget and move on with their lives whereas the ones who have issues later on are the ones that you hear about.

The example of the immature/disobedient/slow boy in his book just made me think that some children really do things in their own time and that it’s not 100% guaranteed that if they aren’t following instructions that there is definitely something wrong that will have long term implications for them. A lot of his book is focused on advising caution with diagnoses because he has dealt with a lot of late talkers who were misdiagnosed as being autistic. However these were older children who often had expressive language issues.

I’m trying to be realistic about it. When my son wasn’t yet pointing he was coming up as medium risk for autism, it was something I was willing to accept and explore (unlike my husband who takes a bury your head in the sand approach!) despite him not having the usual social issues that I’ve seen autistic children display because I knew not pointing was a serious red flag. I now feel fairly confident that it’s not autism but obviously open to that if a professional were to tell me I’m wrong when he’s old enough to be assessed.

So if it’s not hearing issues or autism I think that really leaves me with a receptive language delay or disorder. I contacted Stephen Camarata and he provided some useful studies on the long term outlook for children with receptive language issues. These studies were looking at young adults who when they were at school still had language issues so they had been diagnosed as having a language disorder. I think I now understand what the implications for my son might be if he continues to have language issues when he’s 5+ and with that we can only really wait and see.

I still feel a bit in the dark about receptive language delays (vs disorders). Are there children like my son who at 18 months don’t understand words/commands but they are simply delayed, catch up by the time they are at school and it has no long term implications for them. Your account of your eldest gave me some hope that’s possible? Obviously I’m fully aware that my son could have a language disorder rather than a delay. But at the same time is it naive to have some hope that it might just be a delay?

I loved Laura's list of pre-verbal stages, my son was half way through that list when he turned 2 (and not yet pointing) it took 6 months for him to get to the pointing stage and then 6 more months to have his first very unclear words, we had intensive specialist speech therapy from age 2 and he was formally diagnosed at 3.5 with a speech, receptive language and social communication delay after they had ruled out autism.

@essexmum777 Yes, I’m using her podcasts on the 11 pre verbal stages too. My son is ok on all of them except understanding familiar words and following directions which is skill 7. Imitation can be a bit hit and miss (he will for example copy me to pat his head but refuses to touch his nose!) but he is capable of imitating so I’m less worried about that as the receptive language one which I would say he’s very weak on.

@lingle the point about seeing words as music is interesting. In Camerata’s book he mentions music ability being common in the families of late talkers. My DH was very musical as a child and my 18 month old seems to ‘sing’ long notes a lot :D

"I still feel a bit in the dark about receptive language delays (vs disorders). Are there children like my son who at 18 months don’t understand words/commands but they are simply delayed, catch up by the time they are at school and it has no long term implications for them. Your account of your eldest gave me some hope that’s possible? Obviously I’m fully aware that my son could have a language disorder rather than a delay. But at the same time is it naive to have some hope that it might just be a delay?"

no, it's not naive, I am testament to that. And guess what? They tend to be the children of highly analytic mothers! :)

Haha Yours is one of the very few examples I have found. It gives me some hope

Would you be able to tell me a little about how long it took before you started seeing progress ie when did your child start to show some understanding of words/instructions?

re autism. The most useful thing I learnt is that autism is not one thing. Also, the criteria for diagnosis change regularly. You like books: Take a look at the history of autism and then project forward to your child's 18th birthday, 30th birthday, 60th birthday. Do you think our current criteria will be unchanged? I don't. It's not like having or not having measles.

For me - perhaps because of unconscious prejudice, or perhaps not wanting to be tied down to the medical fashions of 2007- it felt important to reject the label. Whether I rejected it or not didn't really matter to the boys long term. The things that mattered there their biological potential and the nature of their environment, a massive part of which was my parenting. So perhaps fixed ideas are the real problem. You can be a fantastic help to your child and help him with this imbalance you've noticed irrespective of your beliefs, and so can your husband.

Hanen is good with this - it doesn't demand that you accept any label. Ditto Floortime.

Where labels are wonderful in the early years is where a parent feels unsure about the problems being "her fault" - it releases thousands of mothers from that burden and thus fees them up to make better quality observations, etc etc.

If my boys' life situations had been less favourable they would still have learnt to speak and understand because that's their biology. But they might have suffered anxiety to a degree that held back their social develoment - perhaps even to a point where an ASD diagnosis could have proved a helpful tool. Does this mean they "have" a sort of "benign" autism? I don't know and it doesn't particularly matter. What matters is that I managed to help reduce the risk of anxiety caused by their differenes more often than I increased it....

"Would you be able to tell me a little about how long it took before you started seeing progress ie when did your child start to show some understanding of words/instructions?"

I used this board as a sort of diary so you will find the story here.

I often noticed that when I had got down deeper - accepted that a problem lay deeper than I wished - and adjusted accordingly progress often followed quickly. e.g. it took years with DS2 for me to accept he was a visual learner and had sensory difficulties but once I came to terms with that I adjusted my behaviour slightly and voila.

@lingle I understand what you’re saying. It’s an interesting point about how the diagnostic criteria changes over time. I wonder whether receptive language issues on their own without any other markers will ever lead to a diagnosis of autism in the future.

Taking the present diagnostic criteria which is all I can really go on for now I feel fairly confident that my son isn’t autistic and I’ve learnt to trust my gut over time as a parent. There’s a very specific problem that I know needs addressing which is the receptive language issue. I know it’s easy to end up in a state of denial but I’m generally very pragmatic so I would rather know and label a problem in order to get started on providing appropriate support.

I’m going to check out your post history about your DS1. Thank you :)

@lingle By the way I just wanted to tell you that I followed up with professor camarata to find out if he has seen any studies on receptive language delay (rather than disorder) and he responded that he was not aware of any children outgrowing receptive language issues and that they seemed to persist. It seems like your DS1 was quite an anomaly! I’ve searched a lot of forums for anecdotes and only seen one other person who described their child outgrowing an early receptive language delay. In that case they started early intervention and the child had a sudden language explosion at around 2 years old. Very interesting

" he was not aware of any children outgrowing receptive language issues and that they seemed to persist."

..."and yet it turns......" as I think Galileo once said....

My husband is also a professor and he taught me a very useful phrase: "When we say it, it's anecdote. When they say it, it's evidence. "

Go to the SN need board from 2008 on. Most of us found that our kids had language explosions late. Lots of children outgrow their receptive language delays - but sometimes too late for a full catch up because think of all they have missed out on. Raggedrobin, tclanger I forget the other names.

Stanley Greenspan published a very moving account of a grandmother who was "given a leaflet to explain" why what she observed couldn't be happening.

What I would accept is that none of us reported language explosions beginning after the child's fourth birthday (save where hearing, health, etc have been causes). And at five, things are starting to get fixed.

sorry by "fixed" I don't mean "no progress"- I mean you are more likely to get steady progress as per Danni's post above.

DS1 had a language explosion at around 2. Ds2 at around 3.5 which is leaving it bloody late. The later is happens, the more rebalancing and catching up there is to do.

"@lingle the point about seeing words as music is interesting. In Camerata’s book he mentions music ability being common in the families of late talkers. My DH was very musical as a child and my 18 month old seems to ‘sing’ long notes a lot :D"

Yep. It's all pattern recognition. But it gets unbalanced sometimes. It was very common amongst this community.

Its interesting - especially the delay/disorder/different processing etc Anyway i'll stop hijacking the thread now :-) but just wanted to add that my DS went from having a diagnosis of severe receptive/express delay to being just about caught up now - there was never an explosion though there was very very slow progress with intensive speech therapy - initially our speech therapist wondered if he had 'Mixed receptive-expressive language disorder' but I think that must have been ruled out by the consultant because he said it was a delay not a disorder.

that's good to hear Essex.

I once grumbled to a couple of doctor friends about the language and how even they (friends) couldn't help but go into "voice of authority" mode when describing the criteria for ASD even though when you boil the language away you're not left with much that is different to what you told them.

The reply was "you're right, but in truth loads of the things we diagnose are like that, even the physical ones, you just don't realise it".

not sure if that makes labels better or worse! but most things are not like measles or smallpox or whatever where there is a "thing" there.

My DS nearly 4 has a speech and language delay hard to categorise as limited professional involvement over the last 8 months. Only in last few weeks we are getting copying of words. So hard to deal with when only time will give answers. I am always looking for threads on this area so this has been so useful. DS also has sleep apnoea which I am sure has to be linked in someway just can’t find much on the two combined. Thank you everyone for sharing x

@lingle I will be reading the old posts on the board with interest. You’ve given me a reason to feel hope and that’s amazing, even if things turn out differently for us.

@essexmum777 I think you also posted on the thread where I mentioned concerns about my sons previous lack of pointing which is now resolved. I’m so glad things are looking better for you. At what age did you first detect an issue and when did you begin to feel like he had understood a word/instruction?

@Pixie2015 It’s so tough isn’t it. I do recommend the Teach me to talk podcasts by Laura Mize. I think it was an old post of lingles that brought her to my attention . They’ve certainly taught me a lot about speech delays.

'At what age did you first detect an issue' - hhmmm - between 14 and 18 months i think it wasn't just that he had no words by 16 months, ds practised letters sounds a couple of times around 14 months and just stopped, he never waved before 3, didn't clap until long past 12 months and didn't point until 2.5, he also repetitively opened/closed cupboard doors a lot - so everyone was thinking autism. By his second birthday nursery were practically begging me to get him to a paediatrician and speech therapist, he had no concept of understanding language at all until nearer 3 i think.

He's actually doing very very well academically now which might fit in with the Late Talking Boys book theory.

Thank you I have taken screen shots and will listen to the podcasts anything that helps. Me and DS are learning every day.