When does 'develpomental delay' become 'learning difficulties'?

[Arabica]

Just wondering--DD is now 19 months and has GDD. She has no speech and no gestures, although I think she's just beginning to notice the Makaton sign for 'hello' in that she randomly waves at people.
My gut feeling is that her speech is delayed not only because she has moderate hearing loss (due to glue ear) but also because she isn't sure what speech is actually for...and I think she has similar problems with food, as in, she doesn't eat it.
I know I could ask our lovely portage worker or one of our less lovely doctors, but we don't have any appointments coming up for a couple of weeks, and I'm curious.

Eek! I mean 'developmental delay', of course.

bump

Hi, sorry to hijack you thread Arabica, but if a child has evidence of ability to learn, does this mean said child does not have global developmental delay?
I mean if the child has ability in certain areas such as identifying shapes, numbers, letters, etc? I am asking because my LEA are still trying to take away my son's asd diagnosis. I have had a second opinion now, and the consultant paediatrician I saw says not only is my ds on the spectrum, but has autism rather than asd, and also in her tests he scored considerably worse than previously thought. Previously his ados score was 11, now it is 17, which is quite alot of difference[schok]
Again, sorry for the hijack Arabica!

not scock

or rather schok, ha ha ha!

I think GDD tends to be a bit of a "bucket diagnosis" in the very early years. So many milestones very early on are motor-based, that it's hard to work out what the child's learning capacity is going to be at that age. All you can say at first is they are "delayed". Particularly as NT development between about 10 and 18 months is all over the place - I know so many NT children that either did not walk or did not talk at 18 months. So diagnoses at this age are deliberately vague.

As you go through toddlerhood, the benchmark you can measure against (the things an NT child could reliably be expected to do) gets much firmer and more reliable and so do tests and resulting diagnoses. GDD and SLD are both fairly woolly terms, but I've noticed that SLD has been applied to her only since about age 3, though none of the underlying issues have changed.

Don't know if that helps at all though - I'm conscious that I'm just posting a factual reply to your factual question when I well remember what a frustrating age your DD is going through in terms of working out what the future holds.

Thanks for replies. I'm feeling a bit clearer about the jargon now Fio. Her health professionals are all very positive but, now she has started nursery (with one to one support), it seems clear to me she isn't likely to 'catch up'. 2 of the other children in her room are younger, but in terms of generally being 'with it' and having ability to communicate, in particular, DD's so far behind it's as it DD is in black and white and the others in full HD colour--that's the only way I can think of to describe it. It's not just she's delayed, she's just not as...there. Hope that makes sense.
Does your child have GDD too R3?
Andjust out of interestI'd love to meet some other parents with SN children. Have just joined local parents group but the kids are all much older. Am in N London but will travel.