My Son has a Speech Delay – Period
If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll know that my five year old son, Lex, is speech delayed. He is not autistic, he does not have aspergers and he is not ADHD – he is speech delayed. His speech is delayed because when he was born, his tonsils and adenoids grew so quickly, they compressed his ear canals, and his ability to hear was reduced – which means if you cup your hands together and speak into your hands, you’ll have an idea how Lex heard the world. Unfortunately we don’t know how long this went on for or what he missed developmentally, because a speech delayed child isn’t deaf, so when it was finally diagnosed, we rushed him to hospital to have his tonsils and adenoids removed, plus grommets inserted in his ears. That was September 2009. The reason I took him to an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist in the first place is because when he really started trying to speak – at around three years, nine months – his tongue was coming out of his mouth, not dissimilar to how I have seen hearing impaired people speak. Until this point, I wasn’t worried about Lex’s speech delay because I knew he was exceptionally intelligent and he was communicating with me all the time – just not with words. The ENT took one look in his ears and said he has compressed ear canals. He also asked about his behaviour – which was quite wild – and said this is typical of a child with these symptoms. He then asked if Lex snored. Yes he has snored since he was born, to which the doctor replied – no child should snore. Since the operation, we’ve moved back to Singapore and Lex has been in speech therapy. His progress is astounding. But he’s not there yet and Lex is extremely frustrated with his inability to communicate and the fact people don’t understand him, which often results in bad behaviour – especially at school. But that is another story. Lex will catch up. We are determined to do everything we can to help him do that, but right now he needs time, patience and love, but he also needs the people in his life to work just that little bit harder to understand what he is saying in whichever way he chooses to communicate. It’s not easy – in fact, it’s downright frustrating – but we know, without question, what we do now will set him up for life. The problem is TOO many people around us are constantly pushing us to have him diagnosed with something else. These people are not specialists – in fact they are often people who have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. Some people make observations gently, and are not offending us in anyway, but many people are downright rude in their assumptions. Yes, some of Lex’s behaviour is not dissimilar to an autistic child, BUT he is not autistic. He is speech delayed. The problem is, while a LOT of information is circulating around autism, aspergers and ADHD, speech delay and associated behaviour information seems to be lacking. Do a search and let me know if you find anything of value? I didn’t. Based on my understanding (as a mother, not a specialist) a speech delayed child goes two ways – quiet or loud. Lex has gone loud and his behaviour is reflective of that. The good thing about him being loud is everyone knows there is an issue that needs to be fixed, whereas the quiet kids can get lost in the system. So that’s a bonus – we absolutely know to act. When a child is speech delayed they often react with “difficult behaviours” to a situation, and if you’re not paying attention, oftentimes the behaviour is seen as bad or attention seeking. We work very hard to identify what happened before Lex “changes.” It can be a change of circumstances he’s not happy with; being with an adult he isn’t comfortable with; too much noise and chaos; people interfering with him – such as physically guiding him in a direction he doesn’t want to go and having his protests ignored, and so on. We don’t always know, but we do know that certain changes in Lex indicate that something happened and he is not happy about it. Slowly he is telling us what these things are, but we’re not there yet and he’s still at a stage of slipping back into physical, rather than verbal communication more often than not. So a speech delayed child typically acts up because something happened before the “naughty” behaviour and the important thing is identifying what happened. Liz Elks and Henrietta McLachlan published some information somewhere (I was only given a copy of a couple of pages) and they listed out some advice. What is the child communicating? Be aware that the child is probably trying to communicate through his behaviour and look for what he is ‘saying.’ Use positive statements e.g. “Walk in the corridor’ is preferable to “don’t run.” Be aware of your own behaviour How you respond to the child’s behaviour may be aggravating the situation, are you reinforcing the behaviour? Are you part of the problem and so part of the solution? Consider the antecedents (causes) of the behaviour. Does he understand the task? Always check the child has understood what he has been asked to do and ensure that your language is appropriate to the child’s level of understanding. Use structure Reassess the structure being used. Does the child understand it? Is it being used? Stress aggravates! Remember that for most verbal people, communication is harder when they are emotional. This is also true of children with speech delay. The more upset they are, the harder they will find it to use appropriate language and communication, and so the more likely they are to resort to communicating through their behaviour. Strategies based on pleasing others may
My Son has a Speech Delay – Period Read More »