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Child speech delay testimonies

Smoira

Hello everyone,
My almost 6-years old autistic daughter has a speech delay that means others, including us, her parents, struggle to understand her. We speak French at home and she hears English at school all day long, so she tends to mix both languages all the time. Her speech is not clear, she has little awareness of what's grammatically correct and she gets easily frustrated when we don't understand her. Yet she's making slow but steady progress, and she's trying really hard to communicate verbally and to improve her pronunciation. Though her speech therapist, whom she's been seeing every week for the past 2 years, has been cautiously optimistic, I'm concerned to see the gap with her peers widen.

I'm not looking for reassurance, but for testimonies of parents with now older children on the spectrum, or adults on the spectrum, who had similar challenges at that age, to know how they are doing now with their speech. If that sounds like you, please let me know how they/you are doing with verbal communication these days :)

Thanks in advance for your testimonies!

Parents

  • I didn't speak at all until I was 3 and was difficult to understand when I did start speaking. I'm not sure how old I was when my speech became more easily understood but I'm aware that I have school work from around the age of 6 where the spelling is quite erratic. When I asked my mum why my spelling was so bizarre she said that it was the way that I spoke, there were so many letters I couldn't pronounce, it was difficult for me to sound out words.

    Now I don't think people would know at all that I had such difficulties with speech. I'm completely verbal and my speech is clear. The only things I still struggle with can be processing time, literalness and the social norms of communication.

    I hope that helps.

Reply

  • I didn't speak at all until I was 3 and was difficult to understand when I did start speaking. I'm not sure how old I was when my speech became more easily understood but I'm aware that I have school work from around the age of 6 where the spelling is quite erratic. When I asked my mum why my spelling was so bizarre she said that it was the way that I spoke, there were so many letters I couldn't pronounce, it was difficult for me to sound out words.

    Now I don't think people would know at all that I had such difficulties with speech. I'm completely verbal and my speech is clear. The only things I still struggle with can be processing time, literalness and the social norms of communication.

    I hope that helps.

Children