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Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities
2 1/2 year old with possible mixed receptive expressive language disorder
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Anonymous
They are intermixed often. What are you describing as verbal behavioral approach? There are multiple approaches and it really depends on the kid. |
Anonymous
No thanks. We won't "stick to our own group" because parents need to understand that not every condition is autism. Our MERLD group absolutely encourages a thorough evaluation by a skilled clinician -- not the 15 minute drive-by ASD diagnosis that so many get. Parents need to be educated, especially when it comes to those educational labels the schools give. And as far as the third rail comment goes, it is not MERLD parents who create the idea that autism is a third rail. It is the entire culture of perfection we have in this country. People don't want their children to have MERLD, either. |
Anonymous
I have never, ever, never heard of that happening. |
Anonymous
+1000 Me either... but then we saw a developmental pediatrician and had a full neuropsych evaluation done instead of just relying on a speech therapist and/or OT to diagnose our kid. |
Anonymous
| I'm not going to quote you because it's too long but nobody assumes all condistions are autism. When your child is delayed in receptive language it is much more likely that they have autism or a cognitive issue than it is for say kids with an expressive delay. That is why you have encountered this and have extrapolated your experience incorrectly to the entire population of special needs parents. The bottom line is that if your kid has a significant receptive delay you should get a full eval from a dev ped and a neuropsychologist is he is school age. It does not mean it is autism but it is likely something. Merld is not an innocuous diagnosis. |
Anonymous
You keep saying that but not all kids need a full evaluation at school age. Many have been repeatedly evaluated and the parents (and some schools) understand what is going on. If a child is demonstrating new issues or ones that need further looked at, then yes, a full exam is important but you don't do a full exam to do one. Either way, this isn't about a school aged child, it is about a 2.5 year old. |
Anonymous
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Our original appointment was about 45 minutes. Evaluator spent most of the time talking to me and only a few evaluating my child. Every time we see him, its about 45 minutes, at most.
You all say it never happens but that is how our developmental ped appointments go. |
Anonymous
Oh, Lord. I know who this is. It's b/c your kid had always been non-verbal and had virtually no response to people (even you his mother) by the time you sought professional help. It may not be autism. Have you considered RAD? |
Anonymous
Stop it. This child is not diagnosed with ASD and you shouldn't be trying to force an ASD diagnosis into this conversation. OP had specific questions about MERLD. Let MERLD Mom answer them. |
Anonymous
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OP, my kid was originally diagnosed with MERLD and I spent a long time looking for information and resources. It is much harder to find for MERLD than for ASD or ADHD or other learning disabilities.
You are lucky to have a diagnosis so early because the sooner you begin speech therapy, the better your results will be. It is not weird to diagnose this. A 2 year old that doesn't speak has SOMETHING going on. A MERLD diagnosis is pointing towards a processing problem rather than a hearing problem (deaf) or an attention problem (ADHD) or a social communication problem (autism) or cognitive problem (developmental delay). My son didn't get any diagnosis until he was 5. I wish we had started sooner. Long term outlook is good. Kids with MERLD can become fully functional as adults, although they may continue to have some deficits when compared to age matched peers. It probably won't stop her going to college or dating, as long as she has a normal IQ. Weekly speech therapy is expensive. We were doing 2 hours a week and paying for all of it out of pocket. Insurance doesn't cover MERLD but it usually covers ASD, so keep that in mind when considering whether you want to pursue an ASD label. Some people get them just to satisfy the requirements of their insurance policy. If you need help with speech therapy, public schools are required to provide preschool and intervention for special needs kids so contact your school district about their program. They can do some speech therapy for her, and you can still do some private ST if you want. If you have access to a university with a graduate program in speech therapy, you can usually get sliding scale services from their graduate program. |
Anonymous
NP here. Our first developmental ped was like this. She ruled out autism, btw, based on a cursory evaluation. A fuller evaluation (with a different provider) diagnosed autism (which is undoubtedly the correct diagnosis). So a cursory diagnosis doesn't necessarily mean that you'll leave with an autism diagnosis. But does absolutely mean that you are getting poor care. |
Anonymous
We've gotten great care, poor diagnosis. He's been amazing at offering us every kind of possible service to try, getting funding continually approved for the services I wanted, and supportive of our choices. More importantly, when I knew something wasn't right (new concern), I called and emailed and he called me back within hours talking me through what I needed to know and getting us a speciality appointment within days. He now has changed his thinking as the child gets older. It depends on the provider. The strengths outweigh the negatives as the important thing was getting the services which our regular ped could not get for us despite trying. Him getting insurance to help pay for the services we were privately paying for has been a huge help. |
Anonymous
Verbal Behavior is a specific style of ABA, discrete trial instruction. |
Anonymous
It really depends on the provider and child. We tried ABA. I really liked our provider. She was warm, sweet, engaging and listened to me and the speech pathologist on our concerns. She tried very hard. But, I didn't find it helpful as she was basically working on speech (she was not trained in speech) and always several steps behind what the speech pathologists were doing. We dropped it. I know other kids who have greatly benefitted from it. At 2-3, I would try it if your insurance will pay for it. If you don't like it, you drop it. But, at least you tried. I would not private pay for it like I would (did) speech therapy) for a kid with only language issues (for autism I would). |
Anonymous
| If you are private paying for ABA, you can also look into Floor Time and other styles. Our insurance only paid for ABA, but I know people who raved about Floor Time. |