When is it just a delay vs a disorder?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Just" a delay would resolve itself without intervention. Often, it takes time for a child to be old enough to get an appropriate dx. Therefore, you often don't know at the beginning of the journey whether it's just a delay or something that would benefit from early intervention. Most parents would rather intervene just in case on the theory that it won't hurt and might help and usually earlier intervention is better than later intervention.

This is absolutely not true. Delays may resolve without intervention, but generally a delay to improve it needs intervention.

There are kids that have lisps or can't say their Rs or Ls b/c there was no intervention when they were young. These delays are more difficult to fix the older a person gets.

If a child can't sat /r/ or /l/ by age 8 it is considered an articulation disorder. I've never heard anyone describe a child as having a delay in articulation.

NP +1

One of mine has a significant artic disorder, another just has a delay. A delay is usually for younger kids and when there’s a good chance it will just resolve without intervention. My child with the disorder would never improve without us practicing and correcting - if anything the “wrong” sounds just get deeper ingrained and harder to correct.

[Anonymous]

You won’t know if it’s a delay until they “grow out of it”

It’s a disorder when they diagnose it.

In the mean time, you just have to focus on what you can do to help your child today. This is hard, I know. I’ve been asking my EI specialists if my sons’s issues could be a life long struggle and time and time again the answer is, there is no way to tell. He is 3.

I know a lot of children aren’t diagnosed until after 3

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it age thing or based on severity?

In the IEP world usually a child is recoded by age 9 or before from "delay" to a category that generally stays long term.

With my ST delayed kids who also had motor issues, diagnoses were doled out at age 3 and 6 by developmental pediatrician and neuropsychologists who evaluated them.

Educationally this is true although I think it's age 8 for the IEP because by that point the assumption is that the kid likely won't be catching up. That being said in the SN world it is used casually in the place of "developmental disabilities" also. My kid has several diagnoses and I prefer not to share his medical information. If pressed I will say he has "developmental delays" because it's pretty vague.

[Anonymous]

In FFX County, for IEP purposes, Developmental Delay can not be used as a category qualifying for services after a child turns 7.