By Mother of ‘M’
M is 10 years old. He is a kind and very cuddly child. M cares a lot about the people around him. He can get sad for others easily. Sometimes, I have to say to him “just be relaxed you are not holding onto bad things on your shoulder”. M wants his parents to be proud of him.
M loves doing things with his hands. He loves Lego. He will be in his own bubble. When he gets new Lego, M will follow the pictures then afterwards he will be creative with his own ideas.
M was a confident 1 and 2 years old. Then when M was 2 ½ years old, I first became concerned, because he was only saying a few words. At the time, I thought it was because of his dummy. But there were other children that talked when their dummy was taken out, so I thought that this was not the case. When M started nursery, I became even more concerned because I could see how much his friends were talking.
We had speech and language therapy when M was in nursery. I was taught how to talk to M to improve his language, but I felt I was already doing this for him. We then had group sessions of speech and language therapy. The therapist said, “don’t worry, he’s going to be fine”. As a parent I felt angry and that I was not being listened to and that I was losing time. When M started school, I was still worried about him, but teachers from Reception until Year 1 continued to say that M would catch up.
I took M to a private tuition centre to help with is school work. They assessed him. The tutor there said that I need to speak to the SENCo at the school. I said, “what’s a SENCo?”. I had to wait a long time to see the SENCo, but in the end she arranged for an Educational Psychologist and Speech and Language Therapist to assess M.
In Year 4, M started at a Language Resource Base. I felt better. It is better to know that your son has something, so that you can help him. The SENCo at his old school said, “you can be proud, you did not give up”.
At the Language Resource Base, Mark, the Speech and Language Therapist, said M has Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). When I researched DLD on the internet, all the adjectives and comparatives and everything was about M. I know that M is at the right school now. the DLD will not go away, but the school is going to help him to understand and communicate.
At home I schedule in quality time to be with M, but I do not want him to feel different from his younger brother and sister. I wish for M to have a family and a fulfilling job. M likes science so perhaps something related to this. He is an ambitious child and I think he will be ok, with the right support.