Realising your child has learning difficulties

It's funny, because I have been so focussed on my son's lack of talking that I haven't paid that much attention to my daughter's prowess.  I thought she was totally fine, an intelligent little girl, who learned to speak at an early age, and sing the national anthem at age 2.  She could do her alphabet and numbers from an early age, and we would read books and she learned to recognise words but I noticed she would often do predictive wording - saying the word without really reading it, but saying what she thought it should be.

She didn't really like daycare but she was having difficulty following instructions so I thought it was good for her.  And then she started Kindergarten and she really loves going to school.  She loves to show me her books from school and her new words books.

However, she has always had difficulty with phonetics.  Even when I tried to teach her she couldn't do it last year, I thought she would grow out of it.  She can do simple phonetics for each one of letter of the alphabet, but she couldn't join the phonetics together.  I thought it was her being stubborn, but I realised tonight when I was trying to do her words with her that she really struggled with it.  And she got bored when she kept getting them wrong.

It dawned on me, does my daughter have dyslexia?

Dyslexia does not mean you're retarded. Wikipedia defines it as:

Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, processing speed, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, language skills/verbal comprehension, and/or rapid naming.

At first, I was a bit shocked.  My daughter, who is the progeny of two intelligent parents, has a learning difficulty?  Then I shook myself.  It doesn't mean my daughter is stupid.  It just means that she learns differently.

However, my own relatives think I am being paranoid.  My husband thinks our daughter is just mucking around.  I can imagine that my own mother would say that I haven't been encouraging her properly.  However, I can see that if I don't intervene soon and make it easier for her, she will be left behind and then she will not enjoy school anymore.  She told me today, when we were reading, that she didn't want to do the hard words, only the easy ones.  I told her that all words are easy once she learns them.

So, I have a meeting with her teacher on Thursday.  It's probably nothing to do with dyslexia, it may have something to do with her testing that she did early in the year.  But whatever it is, I think it's important that I have an active role in my daughter's education.

On the flipside, I took my son for a hearing test, as a workup for him going to speech pathology.  His hearing was perfect.  And he did the task very well.  He was asked to hear a sound and then drop a ball into a slot and watch it roll down the hole.  I have never seen him so interested and concentrating so hard.  I guess you just have to find what the right way to engage him is.  The audiologist said that my son was very good and had excellent concentration - I nearly thought, who is this child and where is my son?  My son still only has about 100 words, but he has been stringing 3 words together now but still has a lot of unintelligibility.  He understands what I'm saying and can do complex tasks like making breakfast and using the microwave when I tell him to.  I hope that he turns out ok as well.

When should I be concerned about Speech Delay?

I've been having my head in the sand a little, when it concerns my son, J.  He is now over 3 and his speech is still slow to come through.  He probably has a vocabulary of around 75 words and can put 2 words together (mostly Hello Mama, bye bye Poh Poh) but he can't talk in sentences.

I went to party with a group of friends who are all in the same profession, most of them are parents of children the same age as my own.  One of them, Dr C, was very concerned about J, and said I should see a speech path soon.  I was reluctant because I was hoping starting child care would get him talking more.

She sent me an article from the ABC New 24 program "Tonic".  There was this quote:

I do a little bit of a developmental screening to see whether the child seems non-verbally ok and so can the chil do puzzles and things that are appropriate at that age.  And again if the child is delayed in any of the things except talking I would say you need to do something now.  If the child is only a late talker then I would say well why don't you try to do these stimulation tips and then at two and a half let's take a look again and si fthe child is still delayed at two and a half then I might say well it seems like maybe we should think about doing something and certainly by three I would recommend speech language therapy if the child really has almost no words by three."

- Leslie Rescorla

I looked up a few other things.  From SheKnows.com, in the parenting section, there's an article called Delayed Speech in Three Year Old is a problem:

By three years of age, a child should have a vocabulary of 600 words with 80 percent intelligibility to a listener who does not know the child. This means that a person who has not previously listened to this child talk can understand 8 out of 10 words. (Parents can often understand what a child is communicating better than anyone else, in spite of any speech delay.) quotation mark open By three years of age, a child should have a vocabulary of 600 words with 80 percent intelligibility to a listener who does not know the child. quotation mark close When should a three-year-old be referred for speech evaluation? Evaluation is indicated if he or she has a vocabulary of 200 words or less, is not using short sentences, and has less than 50 percent intelligibility.

So I guess the question now is - where do I go and whom do I see?  I should be speaking 10,000 words a day to my son.  Gosh, I definitely need to improve in that regard.  And read to him more, but his attention span is so short!  I'll post updates as I progress through this trying time!

Julian at 22 months, Erika at 3.5 years

Julian seems now to understand almost everything I say to him.  Things like closing the door, give this item to Baba (dad), go and get your shoes...

He also has taken an interest in books now, which he didn't like last month.  He points at items in the picture books, and can even point to some of the correct items.  Chair, ball, aeroplane, car, helicopter, teddy bear, train, door are examples of the ones he can correctly point out in a book if asked to.  When I taught him door, I knocked on the picture of the door, and now he knocks on the door when I ask him to point to the door.

His toiletting is good now, and I often put him without a nappy during the day.   I still have the occasional accidnents, probably about once a day, but the rest of the time he does his wees and poos on the potty or toilet.

Erika has a good vocabulary and talks complete sentences and has quite a good memory for things.  She also says sorry appropriately now, in fact she says it a lot, quite sincerely.

She busted me the other day when I went up to get her out of bed when I was running late for work.  I opened her door with a cup of soy milk in my hand, and she was awake and she looked at me and said "Mama, you're not supposed to eat on the carpet.  Mama is not supposed to eat upstairs.  Mama is naughty!"  Oops!

She can get on the toilet herself and wipe after toiletting but she has to be supervised.  She doesn't do it on her own yet (I wish she would!)

Julian at 19 months, Erika at 3.25 years

Julian is finally talking more.  He now can say mama reliably, and he uses it correctly as well as baba.  He even said Ah Mah on Friday, which was pretty cool.  He says "pre" which I think means press because he says it when he wants the light turned on or off.  And he also says plane, and of course his usual moon which hasn't really changed.  He actually says plane when he hears plane sometimes, and he can even point to plane/shuttle.  And he says "um" very well and points to his mouth when he's hungry.

He really likes to feed himself.  And he kicks balloons around and he can go up and down the stairs by himself now without assistance.

Julian was also stacking blocks, he can easily stack 4-5 blocks and sometimes more.

Erika has been drawing more complex shapes, she drew a fish the other day (or so she said) which looked like an amoeba with lots of hair really.  But that was quite a good picture.  Her addition and subtractions is quite good, and I have been trying to get her to read more but she still can't spell that many words, in fact no new spelling has come into her vocabulary lately.  Though she can spell Ben, that might be new.

Julian speaking a little bit more

Julian now points to his mouth and says "um" when he wants food.  And he says moon all the time.  Not sure why, but he still does it when he looks out of the window ever since we showed him the moon.

I can get him to repeat mama (well mamamama) if I ask him to, and today I swear he said "pay" when he picked up the toilet paper.

Julian advancing finally!

Yay well Julian is finally communicating better!  I was in a bit of a despair because he wouldn't talk, but he now says bye bye routinely and waves, and is quite cute at it, and does say moon (as moo) and says mama sometimes too.  And he points at things he wants and shakes his head no when he doesn't want something.

But the big thing was this weekend I was trialling him without nappy and taking him to the toilet and he was doing really well!  He would hold quite well during the day, though just after milk was always tricky, missed quite a few there.  Today was great, I actually took him outside with no nappy and held him and asked him to wee wee and he did a wee for me! On the grass!  3 times!  And he would sit on the toilet and try to wee if I put him there rather than fight, and if he cries going to the toilet I know it means he doesn't want to go.  Though there have been a few times where I was sure he needed to go and I just ended up taking him to a different toilet.

More milestones for Erika and Julian

Julian has started making the kissing noise!  He is so cute when he makes the kiss noise, I've been making a huge fuss over it so he does it more.  I took a video of it in the car but it is super shaky.

This morning I was making Erika's breakfast and he went and got the dining room chair, pushed it over to the island bench and stood on it and started stirring Erika's porridge.  My little baby is now such a little boy!

Erika has started jumping from a height today with assistance.  I saw Andrew doing it one time when I went to visit K and J, and I was impressed, but it's obviously an age thing.  So I got her to jump from the bed to the floor holding my hand and she did it.  She is quoting Dora incessantly and Dora is her favourite TV show at the moment.

Julian at 16 months, Erika at 3

So Julian at 16 months has started saying "up".  Not sure if he is using it to be picked up though I do pick him up every time he says it, and he can do "ababa" very well, doing the American indian thing with his hand "abababababa".  He holds with 2 fingers sometimes, feeds himself finger foods, and can use a pen to draw lines on a piece of paper.  And he climbs everything.  He can get on the bed, the chairs, the table and the other day I caught him holding onto the safety gate with both hands and both feet on 2 rails so he looked like he was trying to climb over the safety gate.  He also sits on the toilet to poo and wee sometimes though he doesn't do it often enough for my liking, and he tolerates water on his head quite well.

Erika at 3 is talking very well, copies things you say if you try to teach her and follows 3 step commands quite well.  She builds towers, steps and aeroplanes out of lego, and she likes drawing things, and can draw some shapes and likes to draw people with faces, arms and legs.  She can write the capital letters A, E, F, I, O consistently and sometimes writes L, M and R.  She can count to 20 easily but struggles a bit beyond that unless prompted and she can use her fingers to count to 5 and show me 1 to 5 on one hand.  She can even do "broken 3" where she puts her thumb and middle finger down holding the other 3 fingers up.  She can spell Julian, Erika, Star, Mama, Baba, Gugu, Poh poh (sometimes).

Julian at 14 months, Erika at 2 and 3/4

Erika has lately started sleeping with the blanket around her.  It's cute, now she likes to have a pillow and her blanket and she does it all on her own.  Another great thing is that she has stopped weeing at night!  I started giving her milk at night, sometimes even quite late and she's still not weeing.  So she has gone almost a week now with no nappy at night.  What a clever girl!

Julian has been quite cheeky, for the last month he has been pulling out one of the drawers on the coffee table and using that to step up onto the coffee table.  He likes standing and dancing on  my glass table.  The other day he also did a clapping hands motion, which could be the signal for toilet poopoo-weewee so I took him to the toilet and he urinated in the potty.  Hubby was so impressed, but I don't think he was really understanding or communicating.  Though he does understand when I tell him not to touch the Christmas tree, though he can't help himself, he keeps wanting to pull the decorations and balls off the tree.