I have a child with severe physical disabilities and learning disabilities. They are indisputably due to an obvious birth defect, so we do not have the added complication of not having a proper diagnosis, but the spectrum of physical and mental impairments for this diagnosis is so vast, the outcome is still very much “wait and see” for these kids.
He was mostly non verbal until the age of 3, struggling through the day with about 6 words, a lot of eye contact, facial expressions and pointing and 2 signs he had learned in special needs preschool (and only used when in distress, and he refused to use more).
People who knew him well were cautiously optimistic about his verbal and cognitive development, but it was impossible to do proper assessments of either. Frankly, I didn’t even listen whenever anyone tried. I was completely sure that his cognition wasn’t impaired at all and his speech was impaired massively. In fact, it was *I* who pushed for speech therapy at 2.5 when the specialists still tried to tell me that being nonverbal at that age was still in the range of normal and that we just should frustrate him more so he’d have more of an incentive to use his words. (I actually insisted that it wasn’t normal for MY kids, his older siblings having expressed themselves at that age in complete grammatically correct sentences including tense and mode...you can guess how well that went over...).
The speech therapist though bore me out, she assessed his receptive speech as completely age appropriate but his use of expressive speech as clearly impaired (and that he was already plenty frustrated about it, thank you very much) but progress was agonisingly slow. They were planning to start him on Facilitated Communication in his special needs preschool.
Then suddenly he started speaking at just under 3.5 and walking at just under 4. Sudden “language explosions” aren’t a myth, they do happen. He improved by the hour, it was fascinating. And it was almost as fascinating to watch how the verbal and physical development interacted with socio-emotional development and his expression of cognitive development. He went through his Terrible Twos at the age of four - what a difference it makes to have so many more options to express your needs and wants or your displeasure, and to follow your interests physically.
When he was assessed at 4.5 for mainstreaming, he scored in the 95th percentile on cognition. Still 50th percentile on verbal, but they told us it was about lingering articulation issues, grammar and vocabulary were off the charts. 50th percentile on socio-emotional development, and that one remains a concern, as well as a strong delay in graphomotor skills, both of which precluded his starting Kindergarten in spite of the cognitive assessment.
Seriously - we knew. I swear you can see the wheels turning in the pictures my DH took right after the C-section. It’s good to know he ca;show it now, but he still has a ways to go before he can function in a standard settting, the way aeh describes.
So, miracles do happen. (Medically speaking, he shouldn’t be doing what he is doing). If I were in your shoes, I’d continue to trust my instincts and assume he couldn’t express what he can do. But it also means you need really place an emphasis on his options For expressing himself, with Facilitated Communication if need be, because the time to learn how to express himself to people he doesn’t know is right about now. Best Wishes!
