Child speech delay testimonies

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
  • Hi, I couldn’t talk properly when I started primary school (4-5 years old) and had to have speech therapy until I was seven. I remember sitting with the therapist, learning how to talk slowly and pronounce every syllable. I was fine with every other milestone. Before this somehow only my brother, who was two years older, could understand me and spoke for me, which in hindsight probably wasn’t the best thing for me. 

    To be honest, at 35, I still struggle with speech a bit. Sometimes, if I don’t think a sentence through in my head first then words might come out in the wrong order, or just tumble out incoherently and I have to pause, reset, focus and start again. I was quite self-conscious of this when I was younger, but as I’ve got older I’ve learnt to make a joke out of it when it does happen in the hope that it makes me seem more human. 

    I can relate to your daughter’s frustration. I can remember my mum telling me that I wasn’t pronouncing ‘bath’ properly, but to me in my head, I was pronouncing it the same way and I couldn’t distinguish the difference. Being constantly told that I was doing something wrong (by parents, family, teachers) when it didn’t seem wrong to me increased my anxiety and my self-esteem went down when I started school. I only had to learn one language at that stage, but when I started learning French at secondary school (11 years old) I loved it and excelled at it. 

    Overall, I still somehow managed to make friends, get a degree, get jobs and be in a long-term relationship. And I’m sure your daughter will too. I think that the most important thing is that she keeps enjoying talking and interacting and she feels safe and comfortable making mistakes. 

    I hope this helps Slight smile

  • Thank you for sharing! What you're writing about not hearing the difference between what others said and what you said seems to be what's happening to my daughter too, for instance she cannot say "dragon" properly. She says "gradon". She can say "dra" and "gon" separately, but "dragon" simply doesn't come out. Now it makes sense with what you're explaining: she may not even notice there's a difference. What would you have liked adults around you to know when you were thst age so they would have helped you without adverse consequences on your self-esteem and anxiety?

  • When she says ‘gradon’, do you feel she is trying to say it fast? Because of the anxiety I used to try and talk fast, but again I couldn’t hear the difference. 

    For me, perhaps the adults could have let me talk without correcting all the time and encouraging me to talk, like asking for my opinion, so I would still enjoy talking and communicating. Singing might help or encouraging her to express herself in other ways, like art or writing. Just being appreciated for the little quirky princess that I was Smiley I don’t know if what I wanted would have been helpful or harmful, so only do what you think is best or what the professionals advise Slight smile

  • From my point of view, she rarely seems to rush when speaking, but that's based on my standards, so maybe based on hers, she actually does...

    Thanks for your advice, I will try to interrupt less her flow, even if she makes mistakes Slight smile

Reply
  • From my point of view, she rarely seems to rush when speaking, but that's based on my standards, so maybe based on hers, she actually does...

    Thanks for your advice, I will try to interrupt less her flow, even if she makes mistakes Slight smile

Children
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