Speech therapy (once per week, outside of school) has been *the* one therapy that has helped my ds with his expressive language disorder.
This is really good to know - thank you - I'm going to push for this service for DS again this year (the school reassess year by year so it's not scheduled for him yet for grade 3), plus I'll look into my husband's coverage to see if we can also do this outside of school.
Most of his therapy has been directed toward just getting his thoughts out (verbally or written), organizing his thoughts, and developing his written expression (adding descriptive detail etc).
My DS needs major help with this as well...
He is the only kid like him that his speech therapist has ever worked with, and she's basically developed his therapy program as she's worked with him.
That's great! She sounds awesome - flexible and adaptable.
...and second, he doesn't have any kind of apraxia (I think that is the term - for physical challenges with vocalization?).
Yes, you're right. My friend's son was diagnosed with apraxia. My DS, like yours, doesn't have this either.
He will tell you that he just doesn't "know what to say" - and it's not like a kid who has ideas but doesn't know exactly how to put it in words or who is afraid they won't say something correctly - it's like he literally is stumped by the request to come up with anything, like there's a huge void in his brain for that particular request.
Yes!! My DS tries but gets overwhelmed when his ability to verbalize can't keep pace with the thoughts in his head, and then he'll say "oh never mind! It's just too hard to explain."
He's a very concrete thinker - his struggles with expression first became apparent to *us* (parents) when he wasn't able to deal with open-ended writing assignments at school (started in 2nd grade). When he had writing assignments at home he would just melt in frustration and not be able to write even a simple sentence.
My DS is very abstract, but reacts the same way as your DS. Open ended questions are too much for him because his ideas out pace his written/verbal expression.
By the time he was in 4th grade he started telling us he had some of the same challenges with getting his thoughts and ideas out even when it was verbal conversation - that's when it finally dawned on me that maybe an SLP could help, and around the same time I read something about speech therapy for gifted kids who had disorder of written expression.
I was lucky that the school was proactive and suggested speech language therapy in grade 2, which he qualified for because of his diagnosis.
I'm sure you're thinking, um, why didn't we take him for speech therapy then, but we had no clue there was any kind of anything going on other than him being a quirky kid who didn't feel like talking. He seemed to be on-track developmentally in all his other areas, his dr was never concerned at well-kid checkups, and his receptive language was a-ok. Once he did start speaking everything was in long, complex sentences so for sure we thought everything was a-ok at that point - but the flip side of it is, he wasn't being asked to do the type of expressive output that he is challenged with until he was in 2nd grade at school - and then we chalked his initial lack of output and classroom behaviors to either being bored or being a perfectionist because by then we knew he was clearly a really high IQ kid.
LOL oh, so similar. His older sister waiting until 24 months to talk, then was using sentences in a few weeks, so when DS didn't talk I wasn't worried. He was so social and responsive, happy, loved peek-a-boo, curious, alert, engaged, affectionate, etc etc that none of us were worried. In fact when he did start talking, he was able to make the "K" sound early (many kids substitute this with "T") ...AND he referred to himself in the first person (many kids start off referring to themselves in the third). People commented how advanced his speech was (when he was 2-3). Pffft. Ironic?
The key has been his SLP - she cared tremendously about helping ds and was challenged (in a good way - she was interested) in finding a program that would help even though she hadn't worked with a child with his set of challenges before.
The right person can make all the difference. That's awesome
I wonder if there might be some clues in the testing he's had (WISC etc) that could help understand the sequencing challenge.
Arrrgh... I want to keep answering/discussing, but DH & the kids need me... more later...
