Question for SALTS please. If a child has a 12/15/18 month language delay, what is it 12/15/18 months delayed from?

[lingle]

Is it measured from the middle of the normal range or from one of the edges and if so which edge? And is the point it is measured from adjusted for sex, so that a girl's delay would tend to be 15 months but she might be identical to a boy with a 12 month delay?

Many thanks in advance! It has been really bugging me when I see these references and can't figure out what they might mean!

By the way, quick thank you to Moondog for the recommendation of the author of "Listen to your Child". After I'd gone through it with a pen changing all the references to when things happen (I added another year to make it less painful!), I managed to read it with pleasure. Very helpful to start getting more familiarity with normal development.

good question lingle, I will watch this thread with interest.

I'd like to know the answer too. I would think it must be quite hard to compare as what I find is that DS2's language aquisition is now too rapid to keep track of (26 months) whereas DS1's language is growing only very slowly.

What I meant was I could say DS1 has the language of a 2 year old but that would give the false impression that it is expanding at the exponential rate of an NT 2 year old

very very interesting point cyber. as it manages to articulate my feeling that the picture based standardised tests etc of language don't fully capture the limits to DS's language compared with an NT child his age.

I believe that rate of progress is one of the factors they take into account when deciding on the "mild, moderate, severe, profound" categories though I'm not sure. So maybe a child could have, say a 2-year delay but the child's new rate of progress would be taken into account when deciding on the degree of severity? Am agog for SALTS to tell all! Thanks in advance.

bump for evening

You are getting into heavy duty stats here!
Ask for the maual of the test you are reffering to from the SALT. All is revealed therein. Happy reading

I think you are taking these rough perameters a little too seriously if I may say so though.It's always educated guesswork depending on time of day/how kid feels/skill of SALT and other variables.

Glad you enjoyed David Crystal's book Lingle. He is a lovely lovely man in RL too which helps.

Thanks moondog.

Wonder if any other mumsnet SALTS have had to deal with lingle-type people asking this and how you answered them.

I'd be delighted if I had a parent as interested and inquisitive as you.Most aren't though.
I'd be filling your arms with manuals and papers and other stuff.

Have also wondered this - I realised ds1 was delayed after reading the What to Expect book where it gives details of basic milestones and the minimum a child should usually be achieving each month. At around 18 months ds1 was always ahead or appropriate in everything other than language where he started to slip further and further behind.

According to the SALT ds1 now has approx an 11 month delay (and bizarrely I can pinpoint exactly when his development stalled - between 20 and 31 months old..) but I'm sure the majority of 2.7 children would be ahead of where he is now in terms of functional language, so have wondered how accurate this is.

parameters obviously.
God, that looked so thick.

i would give you the manual too.
tests are omly as good as the person administering them imo.
i would guess taht its taken from the median of the range.

The SALT the DS1 sees has never actually given me her assessment of his delay - whenever I've asked she has always said its not really relevant and its more the progress rate that is...still doesn't stop me wondering what his delay is "officially". She also said something about the tests only giving part of the picture - as yes most NT-non-delayed child would do them all etc but she doesn't discount the fact that DS1 is way more communicative with those he knows so its not the whole picture.

Kettlechip - how weird that is the exact timescale IMO that my DS1 stalled too!

Thanks for further replies! Interesting that you have the same response littlemisschatalot.

It's astonishing to me that this is clearly not a frequently asked question - there is such a difference between median and edge.

I take the point about tests only being as good as the adminstrator - but it should be possible to consider the answer on a hypothetical "full knowledge" basis.

Google doesn't know either. It's all very scary!

v. interesting further posts, thanks moondog and misschatalot for your professional perspective. btw I would pinpoint DS's stalling as being between roughly under 24 months (he had a lot of bugs/colds etc that winter) and 36 months. He "lost" about a year of social development - but did become very good indeed at jigsaws (doing up to 35 piece ones at 2.5). Strangely he is only very slightly interested in jigsaws now, and probably isn't really any better at doing jigsaws than when he was 2(!).

I too have often wondered what dd1's delay is (chronological terms), and would like to know whereabouts she would "score" in a typcal 4 year old range, for various different types of language.

I have asked, often, but never been given an answer. I have also never been given an idea as to her progress rate.

Mind you, dd1 was signed off form SALT years ago, for the simple reason that she was verbal at a pre-school age .

dd1 was verbal, but at that point virtually all speech was echolalic. any spontaneously generated speech was at single word level. dd1 was 3.2 when she was signed off.

thunk indeed. makes me grateful that however underfunded the local service is, at least they seem try and spread what little they can provide in a fair manner without such arbitrary behaviour. does she have any private SALT?

we couldn't get one at our last ouse - very rural, and only found one SALT willing to travel out to us (who had interest in ASD). She would have had to charge travel costs, as would be 90 min journey each way so fair enough, but made the cost way too much for us then.

So no, dd1 has never had SALT input (when she was on the books, she was assessed 3 times over the space of 18 months. By 3 different SALTS, so all initial info gathering stuff rather than actually focussing on dd1).

That's why we jumped at the chance to move before Christmas - dd1 is now in an ASD school, with a SALT in her classroom permanently (max 10 children, 1 SN teacher, 1 SALT, 1 SN assistant in each class)

i can honestly say in 15 years no one has asked anything like this!

lingle - when the NHS SALT assessed DS most recently, doing CELF tests and getting percentile scores, her comments seemed to be by reference to the low boundary of normal (the 17th centile), rather than the 50th.

LOL! It must be middle, otherwise there'd be people on this forum saying "my child has a 1 month delay" and that wouldn't be right!

Suspect it's measured in standard deviations from the mean?

The story of basically "stalling" for a year whilst picking up visual skills is so common isn't it? That's us as well (both of them). A "tilted" intelligence is my phrase of the week.

cross-posted Total.
Was that they one where they tried to fob you off by saying he was now "within normal range"? I remember you talking about that.

Indeed it was. He had a decent amount of SALT after that, as we went to a SALT "narrative" group - which was with children slightly older, but focussing on question words and sequencing to put together a - narrative -. I want at the very least for him to do that again at some point this year.

I'd also point out that the average NHS salt simply hasn't the time to pore over the fine detail of assessments.They give one angle on a child with a whole lot of other stuff.

I think too many SALTs spend too much time assessing and not enough doing. It's easy to assess y'see. Much harder to decide what needs to be taought and how.
Effective transfer of relevant skills is an area in which SALTs are weak (not being teachers) ,a gap which in my experience is filled very well by a behaviour analyst (which I am also training to be) as these people know about effective teaching.

The average teacher doesn't unfortunately, anymore than the average SALT does.It's a scandal of epic proportion.

I agree moondog our last salt kept assesing him every 3 months but we was not progressing our new one sat me down and said ok this is hard but atm we have to accept hes not talking at all or trying to lets look at other was for him to communicate and hurt but now feel postive that doing something and hes started picking up makton so he can now tell me if hes hungey , thirsty tired and that to me is gret dont care how he does just that he can