Background: husband 2E (Aspergers), me gifted, my 6.5yo is 2E (exceptionally gifted + Aspergers). Gifted and Aspergers in both families.
My daughter is 3y4m and also has Aspergers (yes it's possible to diagnose girls with Aspergers very young in case you're thinking this is not possible!)
From infancy her receptive language skills were fantastic. However she turned 2 and was still not putting two words together. She had an extensive vocab of single words (you'd name an object once and she remembered it forever). She'd only put two words together when one of the words was "please", which didn't really count as two words.
At 2y2m we saw a speech therapist who assessed my daughter as having expressive speech delay. After 4 sessions over 4 months, my daughter could say things like very long sentences. However I don't know how much was due to speech therapy (as I wasn't really impressed with the therapist's suggestions) and I feel my daughter kind of did it on her own, with more intense help from me.
So after four months the speechie told me "the original assessment of expressive speech delay no longer applies because she is now in the average range for her age". So that was cool.
My daughter has always talked non stop but it always sounded like babble. She's much clearer now but we are still working hard on her articulation. I understand her most of the time, but others have difficulty.
Our new speechie doesn't know what's going on, because my daughter sometimes checks boxes for verbal dyspraxia but then does other things which contradict that, or show her sequencing is fine. The issues with my daughter's speech are:
- she puts a "t" on the end of most sentences (or a single word if she's saying one word), for eg "I want to brush my HAIRt" but she can say "mummy can I brush your HAIR please". The speechie said that when kids finish words/sentences with a sound, it's usually an easy sound like "m" ("I want to brush my HAIRm") and not a 'hard' sound like T.
- not adding on a second/subsequent syllable. For eg "poh" for potty (or "poht" if at the end of a sentence). But for newer words she's learning, she'll say it closer to the proper way (my dad commented "for the words she has known for ages, she won't pronounce them properly but when we teach her new words, she gets them correct").
- we're working on various sounds in certain places, like "bus" (daughter says "buh"). Progress is slow but getting there. For eg we have to work really, really hard to get her to say "horSe" because she always says "hoh" or "hort".
I feel terrible for her because she is a bright little thing who has so much to say but she's being stymied by her speech problems. The other day she saw my mother and exclaimed "Grandma! I thought you went to exercise!" and she has never said "I thought" before. She says new things like that in the correct context, correct tense etc and I think how much more are you capabale of saying, but not able to express?
I don't know how to help her because I (and the speech therapists) are confused! Yes we're working on articulation but my daughter is also refusing to do the work, she withdraws and I know she's perfectly aware she's doing something 'wrong' and we're correcting her (my son is similar). So we also have to tread carefully and not cause her to shut down and resist the speech therapy stuff.
I am teaching her to read in the hopes it will help her speech. I daresay she's visual like my son, so I'm launching straight in to sight words instead of taking a phonics approach. I taught my son his letters (pronounciation of them) when he was 14 months, he then taught himself to read by age 2 through me using sight words with him.
With my daughter, she also knew her letters before turning two, but then so much got in the way of life and I didn't get the chance to really sit down with her and pursue reading like I wanted to. Yesterday I introduced her to 6 simple words, today she was able to give me the correct cards when I asked for them.
Sorry this is long... I guess I'm desperate to see if anyone else has experienced this. I have looked in to speech disorders and my daughter might tick a few boxes here and there, but those she doesn't tick are pretty significant.
Also I'm concerned because our 2E teacher says that in all her experience (extensive), the kids with early speech problems like this were far more likely to have learning difficulties with reading/writing and they were more likely to have dyslexia. So I want to help my daughter now, obviously!
Thanks for your consideration!
