Delayed Speech

[sharon M.]

My Grandson has just turned 3 years old.  He is delayed in his speech which I feel is from the fluid in his ears.  He had drains put in at 2 years & 3 months.  He has not had alot of attention.  My son & wife are devorced.  The mother is not in his life.  My son moved from Florida to Indiana, because he needed my help with the baby.

Today he was screened to see were his disabilities are by the county school system to see what program he should be put into.  To my dismay they labeled him Autistic!  She said he doesn't know his body parts and can not catch a ball and doesn't know what number to put in when the numbers are in order and one is missing.   But he does tell me his body parts and sometimes can catch the ball.  He says his ABC's but doesn't recognise all the letters he knows his numbers up to 10 and recognies them, says 2 to 3 words in a sentence, watches blues clues & Dora and answers the questions they ask and imitates sitting in the chair and thinking(blues clues), knows the characters, does not have a bad temper, is not completely potty trained.  He plays with his trains and cars.  The only problem is he does not speak real clear when talking to you.  You can usually understand a word or two, so he gets the point across.  Like he will walk into the kitchen and say, "juice, please" or "eat" then sit at the table. I do not think he was fairly evaluated.  They want to do further testing.  My question is should I allow them to further test or should I reach out to programs in my community & do you feel he is extremely delayed?  I live in NorthWest Indiana.

[jd1419]

If you don't like the evaluation that the teacher gives get a second opinion.  It does not hurt--the teachers may have been bombarded that day and did not have time to do more testing.  Try and take him somewhere that is not related to the school system--and see what answers you get.  I would not say he is totally autistic if he has alot of the answers and does well in playing.  If he just got tubes put in his ears, he may just be a few motnhs behind in development and need a tutor to help him catch up or dad and grandma spending more time on learning with him.  You can help him make fun games of learning his letters and numbers.  My four year old who is extremely active and knows his letters and numbers will sometimes not be able to tell you what number is missing--if he does not want to do this.

I would just get a second opinion and also work with him a little more in learning games at home.

[tomel]

Get another eval. by a good child psychologist.

Here a couple IMPORTANT things to look for
You can also look at this website for other milestones
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/ActEarly/milestones_3years.html

Does he use pronouns properly (I, you, me)
Does he understand prepositions (in, on, under)
Can he follow a simple command
Does he seem to understand what you say and respond appropriatly
How is his pretend play , is there alot of speech while he plays by himself

I would say yes, defintely if he just had tubes put in give it some time. You will probably see a huge change in him. I have seen it in other children once they have those tubes put it.
Wait a month or so before you see someone else to evaluate him. He may test alot diferentally. I would NEVER trust the school to eval. my child. They are not in my opinion competant enough.

Here is another big thing to look for. Get him in a group of other kids his age. Compare him to those kids. That is usually one of the best indicators as to his dev. Yes, all kids are different but for the most part the milestone are the same.  

[tomel]

I apologize, I was reading the post wrong. I was under the impression he JUST had the tubes put in. It looks like he has had them in for sometime.

I would still take him to a good Child Dev. Psychologist or Specialist in your area.

[tomel]

I would say that he  most likely will need speech therapy.

[RockRose]

Yes, I think you should have him evaluated indepently.    If you know of an early childhood evaluation center in your area,  that's great,  or you can look up "Occupational Therapists" in the yellow pages and find someone who specializes in Early Childhood.

From your description,  I can't imagine how they came up with the label of "Autistic" - sounds like there is a delay,  but autism?  ??

I had my youngest son evaluated many times for spatial difficulties,  and the evaluator always would ask if the evaluation seemed like a fair assessment of his abilities.   I'm surprised they didn't ask for your input.

[simbacatz]

When my daughter was 3, we started noticing that she had speech problem. She was kind of like your grandson, she wouldn't say full sentences, no one understood what she was saying besides me.Didn't know her alphabets,only A,B, and C she would say.A lot of times she got frustrated because we had to ask her more than four times what she was trying to say. So we talked to her doctor who told us to try the elementry school in our area, they do the speech therapy for free. we did that for a year, but didn't see any improvement. And asked her doctor if she can just give us a referal to a speech therapist.Now she is doing her therapies once a week for an hour,we saw  a lot of improvement within the first month. It's been nine months, and her speech is almost perfect. I think they didn't test your grandson right, maybe they didn't have enough patience, because he tells you his body parts. And my daughter didn't catch the ball either at the age of 3. I think you really should get him retested some where else. Good Luck!

[tomel]

Another thing that these what I call "unqualified" people dont realize is that speech is motor planning as well as catching a ball. Alot of times kids with speech delay will have other motor planning problems as well, its all tied in together.

[Kate987]

Take the child to a Speech Pathologist for an evaluation.  There may even be a free clinic around you to get evaluated.

[pixijal]

Do you have PARENTS AS TEACHERS in your area?  If so, I would contact them for a free and highly qualified evaluation of your grandson.  You can reach them through your school system.  If you don't have PAT available, try FIRST STEPS.  These are both government funded programs that have people come to your house and do a full evaluation on your child.  It is free.  If they feel your child needs services, they will refer you to exactly where you need to be.  Good luck!