Language delay up to what age can it still be considered 'normal'?

[mysonben]

Hi, hard to put down exactly what i'm trying to say.
But DS has been under salt since age 2.3 , well for fist assesment, didn't start speech therapy until age 2.8 exactly.
Back then there was a little boy that was going with ds for salt. His speech seemed worse than ds at the time.
A year later, (last july) ds was 3.7 and salt sessions started again, ds had made a little progress but the little boy could speak so well! I was gobsmacked what a difference in a year, spoke to his mum yesterday and apparently he got discharged after that (not surprising).
It appears he had a language delay pure and simple, as opposed to ds who appeared initially delayed, then started to develop language in a peculiar way (echolalia, constant repetition of same questions), and much difficulties with prononciation.

Now all this is making me wonder my ds is now 4.1, his salt is sure he has sli, paed thinks it's asd,... it is foolish of me to think sometimes that the language delay will remedy itself in a year even with the support he is now getting from the language unit he goes to.
I'm asking this as one of the salt at the unit said 'ds will make progress whislt at the unit but will not be 'cured' of his sli'

Difficult to know as sometimes only time will tell. My ds is the same age and sounds very similar. When he started speech therapy the speech therapist said he had a speech and language delay. Recently he started at a language group and at a meeting with the sal therapist and all the parents she described our children as having sli which got me thinking similar questions as up until this point I thought it was just a delay. I think the difference between sal delay and disorder is that with a delay it does develop normally but just later. From my experience of children developing sal normally (family and friends, I am no expert) once they get it (cant think of how to put it better) then it all develops very quickly. Since ds has attended the language group he has made loads of progress but is still quite behind.

My SALT says that Ds2's language is "more on the delay side than the disorder side".

But he's still plenty behind at 4.3!

I know how hard it can be to formulate these questions. Is this all about the horrible "is it SLI or ASD?" thing?

Ny nephew could say nothing and I seriously mean NOTHING until he saw a specialist at 4.

He is now nearly 17 and taking A levels.

Hope it all works out for you.

You poor thing - you're getting so much conflicting information. For what it's worth I think SLTs tend to start off by saying 'delay' when the child is young or they just don't know yet what the problem is. (At dd's first assessment, age nearly 3 the SLT suggested 'a bit of a delay' - but given that DD didnt' utter a single sound for the entire session - what else could she say? )

DD's SLT did say once that while some children may appear to have a 'delay', once the delay becomes significant it is normally found to be caused by a S & L disorder/SLI - IYSWIM? Sorry, though, I'm not sure if she clarified at what age a delay would become significant, but she does deal with school age children
And yes, if your DS only has a couple of years in the langauge unit they are probably realistic to say that he will not be 'cured'. Brutal though that sounds, it seems that if a child has sufficient difficulties to get a place in a S & L unit they probably have a disorder that needs long term therapy

Thank you for replies.

2siohban, yes that's it i think that too, once 'pure language delayed' children start to speak it all comes quickly in a 'normal' way (ie: the little boy), of course he is only one to compare with, but you see when ds was 2.5 we worried because he had trouble saying about 15 words max, then as he started to speak a bit more at age 3 the echolalia started (very bad), it became obvious he didn't understand a lot of what we said too. And he is still massively behind now. They will be assessing his whole expressive/receptive language very soon at the unit so that should be interesting.

linglette, no it isn't really about the asd versus sli issue . I'm having trouble writing the exact thing i want to say. It's more along the lines of when a language delayed child starts to speak and his speech is somewhat peculiar/deviant then it can't possibly be a 'simple' language delay anymore, that's my opinion.
I'm coming to the conclusion that once a child gets to age 4+ and still is having such difficulties like my ds, sli or no sli there 's got to be a reason behind it iyswim.

I am quite sceptical about there being such a thing as a "pure language delayed child", especially if receptive language is also delayed. e.g my DS's only diagnosis was language delay with subtle social communication difficulties.

I would see the child who first spoke late, then caught up v quickly as being more of a "late talker" - i.e. a child who understands well and doesn't need much intervention to progress.

I think that there isn't a massive clearly distinction between language delay/SLI/language disorder. In a way it shouldn't matter, but in a culture where it's hard enough to get help with a label, let alone without it's tempting to want a clear answer.

When dd2 got her dx for ASD at aged 3.4 we were told that they did not want to say where she was on the spectrum until she is 4 as they don't really take into consideration the speech as they can suddenly catch up. Dd2 was non verbal 6 months ago, she's now 3.9 and is talking but still behind (apparently only a few months behind but i disagree).

just to say I agree with totalchaos, and I think they should just describe every child who isn't meeting key milestones re understanding/showing/being shown at 2 years as having communication delay. Children with autism are a subset of children with communication delay/disorder - a special case where the problems are deeper/wider/more persistent.