By Gemma Earle
My son is gorgeous, funny, clever, has an amazing memory, is stubborn, hates loosing and has plenty of attitude. He also has DLD.
I noticed a problem when he was 18 months old as he wasn’t talking or picking up words like other children. I spoke to a lovely health visitor at our local sure start centre who assisted me with speech and language referrals, hearing tests and basically shouting to everyone that there was a problem. He had input from speech therapists who said “it will come” but the day he turned 3 and a half, they said, no, it won’t and that he has a severe disorder.
His school was amazing and without their support he wouldn’t be where he is today. They undertook work given by the speech therapist three times a week on a one to one basis, as well as what we were doing at home.
He is now 7 and is understandable when talking. There are new traits coming out all the time though, so I know it will keep being a challenge to support him but one thing we have learned over the past 7 years is to keep fighting for support and don’t give up. You know your child best.
Thank you so much for sharing! Our 9-year-old with DLD has similar personality traits: clever, stubborn, has a strong competitive sense and always wants to win (he plays football).
I am extremely glad for you having a wonderful school where your son is receiving the best support possible. Not forgetting the amount of work us parents put in also.
Have a lovely autumn.
Hi Minna
I just want to give you some hope. My son was diagnosed with SLI (now DLD) early and we started therapy earlier than most but he has struggled with language based assessments since he was in primary school. He was never particularly sporty but he was musically talented. And bizarrely he loves learning languages other then English. At 22 years old he is at university studying to be an ESL teacher (or he might go into special needs – he’s not too sure at the moment). He will never be a straight ‘A’ student but he has achieved so much and we are very proud of him. He will make an awesome (and very patient) teacher.
Caroline