Speech & Language delay?

Question

my son Now 13 has Speech & Languge delay.

Yes a doctory has given this dianosis.

Schooling is a different problem. He is attending a MID class for the second year. TDSB just keeps pushing him along to stay with his peers the same age.

Problem is the teachers do not have any faith in his ability. They teach him how to brush his teeth and comb his hair.

What I need from the school is to teach him to READ, Math, history, everything every kids learns not sweep him under the mat and hope he goes away.

No matter how I have tried over the years it falls on deaf ears. Like they know him better then I do.

I see he has great abilty.....why can't they?

Do not come and tell me I should be home schooling him. I can't I have a full time job that I have to do in order for us to live where we do and pay for services such as speech path and social activies that he needs to attend along with a tutor, because god as my witness.... school is not doing what they should be.

Please advise.

Thanks

Answer 1

I also have a son with a speech and language disorder.  It is very frustrating, because he knows so much more than he can verbalize to us.  And some outsiders treat him like he has less mental ability, even like mental retardation sometimes, and don't challenge him enough in classroom or group situations.  So I know how you feel! Getting those verbal skills up as much as possible is the key thing.

I agree that you cannot depend on the school system to bridge that verbal gap, given your description and also my own personal experience.  You will have to get involved yourself, but that does not necessarily mean homeschooling.  You can either get him private expressive speech therapy, or work on it with him yourself in the evenings.  

There is a great book called "How to Increase Your Child's Verbal Intelligence," by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness, which contains all kinds of verbal games to play with your son that are really therapeutic.  Just a few minutes a day will help his overall expressive ability, incl. things like vocabulary, grammar, logic, etc. It's a pretty informal, fun thing that can make a big difference. I'll include the link below.

Also, reading books aloud to him every day helps, too, esp. if you keep your finger on where you are reading so he can follow along. If I come across a word he won't know, we might pause a moment and talk about it. My children act out the portion that we just read when we finish, which makes it extra fun.  

Choose your read-aloud books so that they bring in those other subjects of math, history, etc.  Biographies or historical fiction about important people, like Washington, Archimedes, daVinci, etc. will bring those subjects to life for him.

For reading, you could take him to a tutor like Kumon, or you could again work on that with him at home.  There is a great set of tutoring instructions for struggling learners at diannecraft.org.  You would need to buy her materials, though. I'll include the link below, too.

For writing, you can have him dictate stories to you every day, or recount something he did.  My son, for instance, was required to keep a "battle log" for every time he played "Battle for Middle Earth" on the computer.  At first it was like pulling teeth to get him to sequence the order of events, but after a few months, he was able to knock out the required paragraph in pretty short order.  Patience is key here.

Good luck!  I hope I've helped.

Answer 2

What about a private school?

Answer 3

Is good to be better.

Answer 4

A "speech and language delay" would not warrant placing a child into a classroom for functional life skills (brushing teeth, combing hair).   Does he have a cognitive impairment on top of his speech/language delay?  Does he have a delay or is he non-verbal?  Those are two completely different things.

When was the last time you had your son tested?  Is it possible that he was misdiagnosed early on?  PLEASE have him re-tested by a professional outside of the school...you may have more ammunition for your battle, but without support (documentation), your requests will fall on deaf ears.

Answer 5

It is hard to answer your question because of all the intials. I don't have any idea what they mean.

A language delay is an underlying language disorder affecting either expressive or recpetive language or both. He needs to have more time or different ways to answer questions and he needs a written desk copy of anything that is presented verbally.