4 year old uses opposite words???

[Anonymous]

My 4.5 year old uses the opposite word of what he means--e.g., "I need a sweater because I am too hot."
He is shivering, so clearly means cold.
He wakes up in the am and asks for "dinner."
His teachers seem totally confused and have sent us for eval.
Curious if this is an early sign of dyslexia, or just normal for his age.

[Anonymous]

Ha my 4.5 year old asks what the meal is called at least twice a week.

A different child of mine did the opposite thing too - with hot/cold in particular, but also heat up/cool down (“my pancakes are too hot! Warm them up!”). He is nearly eight and seems to be NT. He does switch his letters backwards when writing them, buts that’s normal for a little while yet, especially for a left handed boy.

[Anonymous]

My 5 year old son has done this since he started talking, with hot and cold. He always wants to bath water “warmed up” which to him means more warm, less hot…ie cooled down. It almost makes sense if you think about it. He also often asks if the meal we’re having is breakfast, lunch, or dinner! He also sometimes asks if it’s a school day at like 4pm, as if we would ever have a whole day and then head off to school. I think it’s normal for young kids to have very little concept of time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 4.5 year old uses the opposite word of what he means--e.g., "I need a sweater because I am too hot."
He is shivering, so clearly means cold.
He wakes up in the am and asks for "dinner."
His teachers seem totally confused and have sent us for eval.
Curious if this is an early sign of dyslexia, or just normal for his age.

My dyslexic child had word recall / retrieval deficiencies and could not remember days of the week, months and how to use the words tomorrow, yesterday for quite a while.

It is great that the teachers are aware and flagged this and you can investigate more to see if there is something there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ha my 4.5 year old asks what the meal is called at least twice a week.

A different child of mine did the opposite thing too - with hot/cold in particular, but also heat up/cool down (“my pancakes are too hot! Warm them up!”). He is nearly eight and seems to be NT. He does switch his letters backwards when writing them, buts that’s normal for a little while yet, especially for a left handed boy.

Can the 8 year old spell?

My dyslexic did mix up some opposites at 4.5+, which seemed inconsistent with their verbal skills otherwise.

[Anonymous]

My dyslexic kid (now 16) had lots of these sorts of things, and still has a few. Instead of yesterday and tomorrow, for example, he says “the other day.” He couldn’t do days of the week or months until late elementary, maybe middle school.

So yeah, it’s one small, small data point for dyslexia. But in the grand scheme of things also really unimportant. The parts of dyslexia that impair my kid are working memory (his is really terrible) and the reading challenge. He still is a slow reader and he really doesn’t like it, and that makes all classes a little harder.

OP, how is your kid with sounding out words, especially nonsense words? Rhyming? Those are better indicators of dyslexia.

[Anonymous]

get a speech and language eval - 4 is a great age to start

[Anonymous]

That is developmentally normal at that age. It should be passing by kindergarten or first grade.

[Anonymous]

Fwiw my neurotypical 3yo does this. She says she is cold when she means hot

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fwiw my neurotypical 3yo does this. She says she is cold when she means hot

Exactly - totally typical through the pre-school years, and then increasingly a-typical. I’m the mom of the 16 year old dyslexic above who still says “the other day” when he means either yesterday or tomorrow. He’s told me he does it because when he is speaking the two words - “yesterday” and “tomorrow” sort of hover in his brain and he can’t distinguish which is which. So he uses neither. If you ask him to define “tomorrow” he’ll look at you like you are nuts - of course he can define tomorrow! But for some reason his brain has essentially stored these two words that mean opposite things in the same drawer, and when he reaches for one quickly as he speaks he can’t grab the right one.

[Anonymous]

These are semantic errors that are very common at this age due to rapid language growth. It is only a concern if it doesn't not resolve over time, if your child is not able to recognize and correct the errors, or if the errors result is significant frustration. It seems alarmist for the school to refer you for an evaluation for such a distinct issue particulary since the examples you give don't affect the listeners comprehension. It appears that communication skills are otherwise appropriate and the sentence are presented are of appropriate complexity. When this issue lingers, I typically see it in those who have language disorders, dyslexia, and/or ADHD. ADHD is almost always in the mix.

-SLP

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks all. DS also has the tomorrow/yesterday mixup. And he refuses to sound out words or finish rhymes. But his memory recall is otherwise good--sometimes astonishingly so. Will see what the eval says, but very helpful to get some perspectives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These are semantic errors that are very common at this age due to rapid language growth. It is only a concern if it doesn't not resolve over time, if your child is not able to recognize and correct the errors, or if the errors result is significant frustration. It seems alarmist for the school to refer you for an evaluation for such a distinct issue particulary since the examples you give don't affect the listeners comprehension. It appears that communication skills are otherwise appropriate and the sentence are presented are of appropriate complexity. When this issue lingers, I typically see it in those who have language disorders, dyslexia, and/or ADHD. ADHD is almost always in the mix.

-SLP

Just curious, as I have an ADHD kid who never had verbal issues. Why is ADHD always in the mix? This whole thread is really interesting to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These are semantic errors that are very common at this age due to rapid language growth. It is only a concern if it doesn't not resolve over time, if your child is not able to recognize and correct the errors, or if the errors result is significant frustration. It seems alarmist for the school to refer you for an evaluation for such a distinct issue particulary since the examples you give don't affect the listeners comprehension. It appears that communication skills are otherwise appropriate and the sentence are presented are of appropriate complexity. When this issue lingers, I typically see it in those who have language disorders, dyslexia, and/or ADHD. ADHD is almost always in the mix.

-SLP

Just curious, as I have an ADHD kid who never had verbal issues. Why is ADHD always in the mix? This whole thread is really interesting to me.

It isn't that all people with attention issues will have these semantic and/or phonological errors, it is that the people I see have language issues and sometimes they actually stem from attention. When given supportive accommodations for their attention, they don't present with language issues anymore. But, when their attention is divided, they speaking without filtering and we see these types of errors and other things like disorganized language and over-reliance on fillers. In the latter, there is an aspect of perspective taking at play, too.

[Anonymous]

Wondering if anyone has experienced this, not opposite words... my 9 year old still cannot remember what second, minute, hour, week, month, year represent... we correct every time she says 'my birthday next month' and she means her birthday next year, or she says 'three weeks ago' and she means three days ago...

She does know the months of the year now (though didn't last year) and she can read an analog clock (though she couldn't last year).


Any tips for getting it to stick?