Copied and pasted from another site because I wanted to get perspectives (and sympathy ) on here as well.
So, it's the review meeting for Ds1 today. Blah blah blah and by the way, we're discharging him from direct monitoring for his speech and language as we feel he doesn't need it anymore because his understanding and speech have come on so well.
WHAT THE FUCK?! .
This is a lad who will be five and a half in January and who still can not:
1: Tell us if he's scared or worried about something. Or tell us if he's got a headache or a sore throat or a stomach ache. God forbid he gets appendicitis or something as he couldn't tell us he had a sore tunmmy then for example.
2: Explain why he's upset at something happening, even with us prompting and helping him.
3: Understand even slightly the consequences of something or the reasons why something is happening/done. Eg you can say "no" if he's being naughty, but you can't sit down with him afterwards and talk about why what he was doing was naughty.
4: Understand without lots of help and repetitions even very simple story lines.
5: Be able to tell us how he feels/thinks about someone or something unless you prompt him by asking if he's happy or sad and then he can't explain why. He might come home from school and say "I run with W", which is great, but he'll never say if he's angry or upset with W, or ask why to something. Forget about daft questions or assumptions on marriage or where babies come from.
6: Know what his address is.
7: Understand, if told, what to do if he gets lost.
8: Be able to have a simple conversation without things being worded the right way and lots of simple explanations.
Basically if you look at the way the children talk on the toddler thread, with the exception that those toddlers can talk a little bit about how they feel about something which Ds1 can't do, well, that toddler level, bar a few more ands which extend the sentences is about where Ds1 is. At five and a half. Oh, but he can look at a picture and say what's happening and he can count and memorise words. I had to question his long term goals as they said they would get him to read the Reception words. I said he could learn that easily, whether he could understand them is a different matter.
I feel like crying. He is nowhere near the level of even children much younger than him in how he's able to talk to people and explain things and understand things. He still has a lot of echolalia for a start. I said I realised there are children with very significant SALT difficulties in the school and I'm not demanding intensive therapy, but just to keep him being monitored and helped.