? 5 yr old with speech and language disorder

[mum38]

Hi I'm new here and hope you don't mind me asking a couple of questions.

First a bit about my situation. I am a mum of 3 and my middle one has the speech and language disorder. He has big delays in receptive and expressive language plus articulation problems. At the moment he is in yr 1 in a mainstream school with a statement and we are hoping for him to transfer to a school with a speech unit in yr 3. I know along way ahead but we've been told its the next point of entry and they could have between 0-2 places (!) so it is a long shot getting him in there.

Anyway to my questions has anyone any experience of such a unit? Also did your child have to pass a
learning profile to get a place (carried out by a educational pschycologist). We have been told he needs to have a normal learning profile to gain a place.

My concern is he hates being tested and might not pass. Does anyone know what they would be looking for?

My son is one of the youngest in his year and has missed a lot of school through being taken out for speech at local hosp. or illness (he has lots of problems with ears/tonsils). But he can:

read about 15 keywords by sight
knows 24 of his letter sounds and some blends
numbers 1-10 and can count further but not always reliably!
can copy handwriting but struggles
has good observational skills

but
his attention span is pretty poor and he doesn't know all his colours.

Thank you for reading this. As you can probably tell I am getting pretty stressed about the whole thing!!

Mum38 Blossomhill who posts on here has a dd who is at a language unit.

I have a ds4 who is 3 years old and may have a language disorder.
I wonder if by normal learning profile thay mean no additional difficulties. My ds3 has autism and language disorder but was denied access to a language unit as he was too autistic, even though his language needs are his biggest barrier to mainstream education.
Hope that is some help to you. It is very stressful and I hope thinkgs get soted out for him.

I think the learning profile will just be to ascertain that he isn't autistic (so he would have fairly even skills rather than the peaks and troughs you see with autism). All the local language places are unavailable for childrenw ith autism so I guess there must be some way they have to show they're not autistic.

Mum38

Hi I have a 5 yr old with a langauge disorder who attends a local language unit. She has done very, very well. Like your son she is the youngest in her year as she was born on the 31st August 1999 )the lea cut off date).

I am off to do the school pick up later but will be more than happy to talk more with you about it all

thank you everyone for your responses. There doesn't seem to be enough language unit places and it seems crazy to exclude children who need that help because they have other issues. Would love to ask you about your daughter blossomgoodwill if that's ok. Will try and get on the computer later when kids are in bed:)

Hi mum38

I am out tonight so won't be on line. I am more than happy to answer any questions or you can alwasy contacting me using mumsnet's contact another talker (known as CAT).

Blossomgoodwill

thanks blossomgoodwill I will try the CAT thing!

Hi there mum38, no real help I'm afraid, just wanted to say hello and welcome to MN. You will be in good hands here!

Mum 38 - I'll cat you now