Language delay and language arts

[AliR]

My dd6 has a 2 year language delay and although she reads, writes and spells as well as any six year old has a great problem with her language structure.

 

We are currently using Sonlight LA1 which is a good fit except when some creative writing is called for. Although I help a great deal with ideas and acting as a scribe, my dd has no idea how to 'properly' form a sentence so that pronouns,verbs, adjectives are all over the place. This happens to some extent in her spoken language too, but is much worse when she is working on an original idea.

 

Is there something 'workbooky' that we could use at this age for what I suppose is grammar? I think that something structured would really help both her written work and her speech at this point.

[Rebecca in VA]

This is just a guess, but is there any chance your child could have Attention Deficit Disorder? The reason I'm asking is because my daughter -- who is now 11 and clearly has ADD -- was a very late talker also. She could read (fluently) before she was five, but she couldn't hold a conversation until long after that. I think she had trouble because speech (live speech) is so fast-paced, and the words flew over her faster than she could make sense of them. Learning proper word usage took even longer.

 

We didn't do anything special to fix her speech and grammar problems; I just read to her a lot (she hates to read to herself) and talked to her a lot, though at a slower speed than normal. Eventually she figured out the "rules."

[momto4kings]

I don't think that a workbook will be helpful to your dd. In addition to reading and talking to he,r as suggested by the previous poster, I would add listening to books on tape with headphones to her daily school activities.

[Guest]

FLL COMES TO MIND. (Not yelling. CAPS lock key was stuck.)

[AliR]

Thank you everyone. I will take all of your suggestions on board and check out some audio books and also FLL.

 

It may be ADD, we just don't know why dd is not learning speech in a typical way. We live overseas, and there are no resources for assessment or therapies except weekly ST which is carried out by someone who is not a pediatric specialist. The doctors have no experience of special needs, except there are a few autistic children here which has tended to make them point to this as a 'diagnosis'. However, I am not so sure and feel that, while that may be a contributory factor, what is limiting her at the moment is her speech and 'too much going on in her head' - if that makes sense.

 

What I am pleased about is how well dd is doing now she is out of the school system. Behaviour, speech and academics are all much improved - as is the happiness of the whole family! And for me, another benefit of homeschooling is that I get access to people like yourselves who know where I am coming from.

 

Thank you

[hsmamainva]

My 6yo has a language delay (as well as autism). She also has trouble with the syntax of language. She has no concept at all of sentence structure. (So "The pumpkin is on the grass" comes out as "Grass the pumpkin is on the")

 

My daughter has been in speech therapy for 4 years now and it's helped tremendously!!!

 

At home, we write out sentences all the time. When she says something that's out of order, I have a stack of sentence strips that I purchased at a teaching supply store, and I'll write out the sentence in the correct order and then she'll read it back to me.

 

I cannot begin to tell you how much this has helped!!! Her syntax has improved tremendously, just since the beginning of this school year -- and it helps with her reading level, too! ;)

 

So I would highly recommend consulting with a speech pathologist as soon as you're able to do so.

[Mom0012]

I would look at Language for Learning and Language for Thinking by SRA. They are fully scripted programs geared towards children with language problems. http://www.sraonline.com. I am using Language for Writing with my 9 year old now and wish I had known about these programs when he was younger. They are very expensive, but have a great resale value on e-bay.

 

Lisa

[dtsmamtj]

For our son Growing with Grammar has been a huge success. For our son I had to start very basic and build on that. We also use several supplemental things specifically targeted at vocabulary, comprehension, etc. Items from Linguisystems (HELP series) has also been very helpful.

 

T

[cillakat]

WWE and FLL were the magic bullets for us. and they were/are *magical*.

 

K

[cillakat]

While 40% or so kids with ADHD have co-existing issues (ld's etc) and therefore a greater chance of having speech/language issues than the normal population, afaik, a speech/lang delay is not a 'symptom' of ADHD nor is it one of the diagnositic markers.

 

:)

K

[AliR]

I have ordered Growing with Grammar, WWE and FLL on your recommendations and hope to find some help from these.

 

I think some of the problem producing written work relates back to her time at ps, where they were encouraged to write anything regardless of spelling, writing, grammar etc. Although I can see the point of doing this, for dd it would be sheer torture to know she was not doing it properly.

 

She likes to be confident about her basic skills before she can move on to using them.

 

Thank you all