stupid question (maybe) regarding speech delay

[joburg]

DD have been diagnosed with speech delay, but nothing serious according to the therapists. She was just a year behind or even less in the speech therapist's charts. And still at the age of almost 7 she wasn't able to pick by herself a thing like 'a' means one, 's' implies many, not to mention that has/have, present/past times still don't seem to work. And many more. It does seem that she is not capable of picking anything by herself, but she needs to be TOLD every single thing before she can memorize it.

DD is our firs child so i don't know much about child development, but after hearing over and over again from our friends around how children 'pick' the language just by hearing it, i start to question my daughter's language delay. Can it be more than the speech therapists talk about? Can it be more than speech delay?

oh, and we do a lot of exercises in the meantime, homeworks, language exercises, whatever i can find on the net, i try to read and apply as much as i can to helping her.

Thank you bdaonion, the speech/language therapists only told us she is SLIGHTLY behind and never gave us any further explanations. I guess i have to research more on my own and find out how bad or situation is. Right now i cannot afford more testing.

I got more shocks tonight when DD was talking to a friend of ours. It might probably not sound so bad when i describe it here, but on the spot DD sounded really rude addressing to people by the family names, calling her father by the name, her grandmother by the family name ... it just sounded strange! It was obvious she doesn't know how to speak to people, how to address to them in an appropriate manner. I tried for some time to teach her manners, but it looks it doesn't work.

And it's not only the way she addresses to people but her intonation. It is completely inappropriate, sometimes screaming, sometimes cheeky, most of the times completely misplaced. She copies whatever she hears around her and uses it without understanding the meaning of the tones.... what can i do about it?

Don't have any answers but DD's SLT did once say to me that a child with a delay which goes on for a long time ( i.e into school age ) would normally be seen as having a S& L disorder which is causing the delay - if that makes sense? I think you need to push them a bit more for some information

bubble2bubble, you raised more questions for me. Thank you for your answer. I'm not sure i understand what you mean but i do want to look more into it. Do you mean that S&L disorder is different from S&L delay? i always thought that the delay would be caused by a disorder, just that nobody bothered to explain to us what the disorder really implies ... DD was diagnosed with a slight language delay, none of the 3 psychologs we have seen, seemed very worried. We did get a feedback on her overall system not working quite properly but no reference towards a specific disorder.

Does it mean a language delay can just be a delay until a certain age, and if it doesn't get better it might be something else?

From what I know, they are different. A delay - is essentially that. A child who will learn in the same way as any other, but at a slower rate. And with the assumption that they will catch up. I think the age of 4 or 5 is the cut off for these kids.

A disorder is different (although usually in tandem with a delay). Its as badonion says - the learning doesn't come naturally or easily and certainly not always by just hearing language. It can be caused by loads of things and expressed in lots of different ways.

If you look up SLI you may find some more information. How old is your DD?

Agree with all the above, especially jaka, but a word of warning; when your tested by NHS they are also using the SEN matracies as a benchmark as to who will/will not receive help. While you are currently being informed that 'it's nothing serious' you should be aware that this may not be quite what they are writing in their records/informing school.

Sorry if this appears negative but we had child 13 assessed by private SLT last year who stated child should have had ST years ago but due to age would now be unlikely to participate in ST willingly. However, accessing childs school records after this assessment we found that while we were told 'it's not serious, doesn't require SALT' we found that the SLT had informed the school the child may require a statement (never happened), however the school apparently never - to us at least - recognised any speech difficulties!

Look at Auditory Processing Disorder, some of the issues you mention can occur within that area.

Shells has summed up what I was saying
There's a lot of info about S & L disorders here if you haven't seen it already

Thank you all for your posts. And thank you bubble2bubble for the link. I guess i have some reading to do. And sorry for the long post but it just helps me clear my ideas while writing here

I did suggest to our S&L therapist a few symptoms like limited play abilities, inappropriate tone comparing to the meaning of the words. DD often copies intonation that she uses it randomly, especially copied from adults, which makes her discourse pretty annoying. There were many things we have noticed over the years.

She has developed lately, quite a lot i would say, especially since starting year one, but to me it looks more like she is learning things by heart, only if given to her specifically. One can understand her short sentences, but if she tries to tell a story she would fail to make a point after the second sentence. Not even questions and hints would hep her explain things right or even help us GUESS what she means, many times.

Many times her questions related to a new knowledge offered to her (if she asks such questions, most of the times she doesn't) would be far from the point. A new thing would take many times for her to really make sense of it (like the 'a cat, many cats') she still is confused abt it after explaining it time after time.

And DD is 7 years old next week!

Sorry to come back again .... i go on and on, but i just need to scream out somewhere Just now DD came telling another of her fantastic things: 'You should not copy what you see in the snow' I tried to ask her what do you see in the snow? she went frustrated, she had already forgotten about the snow. She went on and on: you should not copy what you see!!!! she started to whine about it. But my dear i asked, how about if we see letters in a book? should we copy them or not? after this it went coo-coo ..... Her whining, us trying to figure it out what it was .... I just feel like i don't want to engage into any conversation with her since i already know it's gonna end up in unpleasant behaviour, whining, anger .... I'd rather pretend i'm busy and destract her ... but that's not good either.

What the heck shall I do? What is this????? The 2 therapists + 2 psychologs + ... gave us: nothing to worry about, a slight language delay and possible this and that and we'll see later .... later when????? And a 7 year old girl can't make sense about a simple thing she had just seen/heard in a cartoon?!