Late Blooming or Language Problem?

I came across an interesting article published by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) the other day, titled Late Blooming or Language Problem?  It has some useful information about the differences between language problems and possibly just late blooming kids (although I've ready that its fairly rare for late blooming talkers to be without some kind of learning disability entirely--see the book The Late Talker).

The article reassures parents that if you think something is wrong with the way your child is speaking or their lack of speech, get it checked out.  We know our children best.  The wait and see approach to communication is not a good approach.  Language skills are developing so quickly that missed milestones could mean something, that if left untreated or without therapy, could be even more detrimental in the end.

The article describes certain factors that late-talking children who are 18-30 months old, with normal intelligence, may have continuing language problems.  These include:

• gesturing-the number of gestures by "late-talkers" with low expressive language may indicate later language abilities, as it seems those with more gestures were more likely to catch up to peers (this may be a great support for using gesturing and ASL in therapy)
• age of diagnosis-the older the child is when diagnosed, the less positive the outcome...so important as a parent to trust your instincts and get an evaluation and therapy as soon as possible.  I wish Nate had received more intensive speech therapy when he was younger, but all too often I came upon resistance by therapists and doctors to treat his speech delay
• progress in language development-even if a child is delayed in speech, if they are trying to use speech in new ways at least every month, without demonstrating this there may be more language issues than just being a late talker

Some of the research available contrasts other research, as there is still much work to do be done in this area.  

Childhood Apraxia of Speech has general signs according to ASHA--

      

     For young children:

• No cooing or babbling as an infant
• Only a few consonants or vowel sounds
• Problems combining sounds
• May have problems eating

     Older children:

• Inconsistent sound errors
• Understands language much better than they can speak
• Difficulty imitating speech, but imitating is easier than spontaneously speaking
• May grope when attempting to produce sounds to coordinate lips and jaw for speaking
• Is hard to understand, especially for unfamiliar listeners
• Difficulty with fine motor movement/coordination

These are just of some of the characteristics of a child with CAS and those that I listed are the ones that Nate exhibited or continues to exhibit.  I'm glad that I trusted my instincts with Nate, and although I had to keep pushing and researching on my own, he's now getting the therapy that he needs and his expressive language skills are growing every day.