If he was using baby signs and had previously been using another language, then it's not language delay. It's speech delay. There is a difference. You make a good point so I'm emphasising this - a lot of people do get these confused and it cancause misunderstandings.
difficult child 3 had language delay - he could make the sounds but he had no comprehension to go with it. He could mimic the sounds of songs on the radio, if you listend you could recognise the words although for difficult child 3 they were simply strings of meaningless sounds. He was a very early reader but had no comprehension of what he was reading - he did understand a couple of words at this stage - "stop" was an early word and he knew what it meant because we practised reading it and would then stop walking forward, or stop the car. He was almost 3 at the time. So he had speech, but not language.
A young friend of ours was badly brain damaged from a drowning accident when he was 2 years old. He was from a bilingual family (Spanish-English) and had been speaking both before the accident, although mostly Spanish. However he would talk English to me. There may have been some mild level of delay in his English - but only slight. Certainly his older sister would chatter away in both languages, slipping easily from one to another.
Then he had his accident. He was "down" with no pulse for 40 minutes. It was weeks in hospital with doctors being very pessimistic, but his father had hope. The boy was unresponsive, according to the doctors, but his father insisted he responded to his presence, to him walking into the room.
I'll cut it short - it turned out that in the accident, the boy had lost all his English. And the doctors didn't know any Spanish (this is Australia, after all - Asian languages are more common as second languages here). It took time but soon the doctors had to admit - the boy had failed to follow their instructions because:
1) he was a 2 year old boy who didn't know it was important;
2) he didn't understand them unless they spoke Spanish.
Fast-forward to several months later and the boy home from hospital. We were at a party at their house, it was late and the boy was tired and whining. No words. We were about to go home ourselves but I stayed to sit beside the boy while his mother went to get a fresh nappy. I counted his fingers slowly, but he was unresponsive. So I counted in Spanish (all I know, is low numbers) and immediately he paid attention and stopped whining! I got eye contact from him and a smile.
Another few months - I was babysitting him and his sister. His mother had sat the boy down in front of a TV playing a compiled video of cartoons. The girl asked my help with a drawing and I was sitting with her, her brother's eyes glued to the TV. Then he started to whine again, so I went to sit with him. Immediately I got eye contact again. By this stage he was responsive to English, he was now 3 years old. On the TV behind us, "Scooby Doo" was playing. The boy was smiling at me, so I talked to him. His sister began to whine - now SHE wnted my attention! "Come and draw pictures with me!" she demanded. But I couldn't leave her brother, he needed to be propped up again anyway.
I sat with him for about 20 minutes and the TV changed to the roadrunner. Immediately the boy's eyes turned form me back to te TV again. I had been dismissed - so I went back to sit with his sister.
What this told me - the boy was understanding me when I spoke to him in English now. But he was still non-verbal.
Years on - the boy is still non-verbal. But he has been using a computer to communicate for some time. He was reading his own name before he was 5. He had language - but no words.
A deaf child who has never spoken can still have language.
difficult child 3 was at this time becoming a concern to us and it was a direct contrast between the two boys that told us so much. The boy was able to sit quietly and pay attention, he was able to move around (with help) and play with other kids appropriately. difficult child 3, on the other hand, was not able to sit still, not able to pay attention, had to be removed from play and from story time at pre-school although they used him to read out the roll! difficult child 3 was slowly acquiring language but understood phonics well enough to read fluently. He didn't understand the connection between the names he read, and the children they represented.
Not every child with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) has language delay.
There can be other speech problems (again, all sorts of causes) which can respond well to intervention by a Speech Pathologist.
difficult child 3 had quite serious language delay. He's certainly caught up now - he talks a lot and with an amazingly advanced vocabulary. Again, from the reading he does - he has learned a lot, is fascinated with etymology and has been using a thesaurus and dictionary since very young.
Now to the naughty things he does - it is difficult to know what to do sometimes. The thing is, whatever you're doing now isn't working (because he keeps going back). If he is obsessed with certain activities, he will go back to them. Sometimes an alternative way of coping is to allow a similar activity under different conditions. For example, difficult child 3 loves to play with bubbles and bubble mix. We had to lock up the dishwashing liquid for a while because he would help himself when his bubble mix ran low. He would be anxious because he was concerned that when he ran out he wouldn't be able to get any more and he would be upset. So we finally got through to him that of course he could have more bubble mix, but he had to come to me and ask for it. He had a small bottle of bubble mix (those bottles anded out at weddings) always in his pocket. We also had a big bucket of bubble mix and some large bubble wands (the kinds you wave through the air to get bubbles from) and he could go there and make bubbles to his heart's content.
In other words - we worked out what he was obsessed by and used it to redirect him to the same activity but on terms we couldaccept. We still had to adapt a lot to allow him, but at least it kept him out of the dishwashing liquid under the sink!
Safety - he would wnader. Plus with his language delay he didn't know his own name, he would not respond if called. So when he wandered, it was scary. I would have the neighbourhood called out, only to find him sitting under the table, hidden by the tablecloth, lining up his toy cars. Totally oblivious to us calling him.
We needed something in place but punishing him was pointless. So I made a wrist band for him that had his name on it plus my mobile phoone number. He learned to keep this on all the time especially when we were away from home. I also used peel-off schoolbook labels. We bough a packet of them and whenever we left home I would write his name and my phone number on a label and stick it to his BACK (because he couldn't resist peeling it off).
The other thing we did - I wrote stories for him to read aloud. Stories about himself, stories that actually helped him rehearse his vital statistics. because he was clearly capable of learning "a script" (from the songs he had memorised) we taught him to answer questions ("what is your name? Where do you live? What is Mummy's phone number?").
It wasn't brilliant, but it was SOME answer on the safety issues.
Other kids at play - we shadowed him and would physically intervene in the event of violence to another. Punishment for hhurting another child - we would again rehearse and say, "You hurt X. You must give him a hug and say sorry. You also may not play with X until he is ready to play with you."
We hadto talk simply until we were sure he could understand and we also reinforced it with our actions and with supervision.
Finding out why helped us more than anything. A kid playing with shampoo could be wanting to make bubbles, or he could be fascinated with the feel or the look of it. Try changing brands, or buy a bottle of cheap stuff with his name on it. Or provide a special plastic tub (we colour-coded difficult child 3's stuff, now he loves the colour green!) and let him pour HIS bottle of shampoo out into the tub. Then get a funnel and pour it back in. If it's allowed in one part of his life, then it might limit it where it is other people's supply he's interfering with.
ADHD medications can be notorious with problems at the end of the day. Rebound can be bad - tat's when the problem symptoms so successfully kept at bay all day seem to all emerge all at once when you're also at your most tired. A change in medications can help - we found ritalin (and therefore Concerta) caused rebound but dexampthatime didn't. Others have found it the other way around. difficult child 3 was on Strattera for three days and we were ready to kill him (and vice versa).
What helpedus in the evenings (still does) is having a routine for him and also gonig gently on him in the evenings especially. A lot of the behaviour which other people would see as rudeness, is often coming from anxiety or his reduced ability (in the evenings) to deal with frustration. We cna't allow it but again, we don't punish it the usual way either. Instead we correct (as much as he can take on board) and aim for prevention and not reacting. or maybe we will reherse a better way to speak. "Please don't talk to me that way; I'm not talking like that to you. Now try again, and this time say it politely. 'Mum, please may I have my dinner now?' Your turn now..."
What I'm suggesting isn't a magic fix. It's instead a start towards helping him learn and practise a better way of behaving. It takes time, parents who are tired or kids who are tired make it all more difficult. But over time it does improve, especiallywith help.
I've found this mob to be really helpful, in teaching me this gradual patience.
I do feel your frustration with how your son goes and does what he wants anyway - we had tis with difficult child 3, we couldn't lock anything away from him because at 2 years old he would climb to ceiling height if necessary, to get the key. He would tear the house apart to find keys. To his mind, if he wanted it then it was his to take. Really difficult. The redirection thing was the only way - find ways to give him what he wanted, but on our terms. But we did have to give him what he wanted, because somewhere in his mind he needed it.
I hear you on the spanking/not spanking thing. I wasn't making any assumptions - when I talk about punishment not working, I meant ANY punishment that isn't working, you toss out. Punishment in general tends to not work, especially punishment where you are imposing your will (which includes time out). When the punishment is closest to natural consequences, you're less likely to be blamed by him. For example - if he hurts another child, that child won't want to play with him. natural consequences. If difficult child 3 doesn't come when called for his dinner, then it will go cold. Not my fault - OK, he can re-heat it in the microwave, but it is a reminder and I won't do it for him. He let it go cold - he can reheat it. If he doesn't put his dirty clothes in the wash, then they won't get washed. natural consequwences. OK, I will ask him if he has anything he wants to go in the wash, and to please bring it now - but if he doesn't, then his stuff won't get washed.
It's helped him learn the most effective way, how to live as part of a family team.
I hope you can get the doctor to give you some help today.
Stick around, let usnknow how you get on.
And read Explosive Childwhen you can. Grab it from the library. I think you will find it more helpful than anything I can tell you.
Marg
