Reply to Loaded question: MERLD and autism

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To the uninformed person who keeps insisting ABA isn't appropriate for a child with MERLD, you really are full of it.  ABA is for behavior and people who are certified are of course qualified to deal with MERLD as well as autism.  If you want to get someone who specialize in speech you get a speech therapist.  DUH.

http://bacb.com/bcba-requirements/[/quote]

I was told to stay away from it for my MERLD child by the professionals who saw him.

Now, we DID have a Functional Behavior Assessment done and put in some school supports that modified his behavior there.  But full-on ABA is wicked expensive, very time consuming (12 to 15  to 25 hours a week) and [b]doesn't increase receptive language*[/b].  And the expressive language it produces is often very scripted -- I've witnessed that firsthand with kids who have had intensive ABA.

[b]Really, most MERLD kids don't need ABA**[/b]. A good behavior support plan, a speech therapist and parents who understand modeling and recasting goes a long way. We saved that ABA money and went on fabulous vacations that truly sparked his conversational language.

[/quote]

We tried ABA too.  The provider was sweet and my child liked seeing her.  However after 6 months we saw no benefit and her work was very simplistic vs. the speech therapy.  The speech therapist really catered their work to my child's specific needs vs. the ABA would spend weeks working on one word.  ABA is good for behavioral issues and other task oriented needs, but it is not good for language as they are very different needs.  You cannot force receptive or expressive language to come.  You can give a child the tools they need and when they are ready they will use those tools and talk.  There are many things we knew our child grasped the concept of but someone else may not know.   It didn't come out till the language came to see the success of it.

Vacations and travel also help with language here as well.  That and colds.  For us, the money is better spent saving for college.[/quote]

Again folks, the point of ABA is [b]different[/b] from ST.  (The point isn't to increase receptive language.)

And please stop making vast generalizations "about most kids with MERLD...," especially since the term doesn't apply to children past preschool age and you're using MERLD as a descriptor for older children that is now 4 years out of date.  The term "MERLD" didn't exist until the 2000 publishing of the DSM, so you're basing your assumptions about treatment on research that is REALLY old.

OP, developmental pediatrician often don't definitively "rule out" autism in very young children.  Sometimes they do, they may just not be ruling it in at this point.  A lot of parents rather cling to the fact that their kid wasn't diagnosed with autism at age 2 or 3 or whatever.   It seems like many parents on here had a preschooler with MERLD who are now on target and no longer have any delays.  So they don't really have SN kids.

So I'm not sure how much their advice or experience is relevant to you, and I don't understand why they frequent this board so often other to express umbrage that at one point in time someone thought their kid had autism.  Maybe your preschooler will outgrow the current expressive and receptive speech delays and won't have any other communication disorder, LD, or ADHD.

However, most kids who have continued speech delays are more likely to have one of the above.  This is based on the research:
https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/child-learning-disabilities/communication-disorders/understanding-language-disorders
https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/treatments-approaches/early-intervention/whats-the-difference-between-learning-issues-and-delays
https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/getting-started/what-you-need-to-know/the-difference-between-speech-language-disorders-and-attention-issues

From personal experience, I can tell you kids who are severely affected by ADHD, or Communication Pragmatics Disorder, or APD can struggle just as much as a child on the spectrum.  It just make sense to do a full educational evaluation when they're old enough whether or not they need social or academic supports.  We repeat educational evaluations with our kid since he didn't age out of his delays every 3 years (and any kid who has an IEP will have this).

Regardless of what your child's diagnosis will be at age 6 or 7, it sounds like teachers are questioning his diagnosis, b/c yes, many teachers are unfamiliar with language disorders, but more than likely they're questioning it b/c of something he's doing or not doing behaviorally.  So you need to make sure that he's in the right school and getting the right kind of supports.[/quote]

ADHD, Communication Pragmatics Disorder or APD can benefit from ABA.  Those are different than language disorders.  You keep intermixing them.  [b]Exactly what would ABA do for a child who strictly has language issues?[/b]  What do you see that looking like?

Receptive and expressive issues do exist in kids.  If you want to call it something different, fine but that is best fitting for some kids.

If you feel so strongly that kids should get neuropsych's when the professionals working with them do not, then, why don't you offer to pay for the unnecessary evaluation to show you are right?[/quote]

Honey, any young child who has  ADHD, APD, or a language or communication delay or a disorder [b]that affects his or her behavior[/b] will benefit from behavioral therapy and/or ABA.  So not every child with delays or a disorder has behavioral issues.  It's sad that you're so bitter and hurting, but read the research.  It's not about me being right; it's about what the research says.

Ask the public school or go to KKI or Childrens for testing under insurance if you don't have the money.  You can make informed decisions based on clinical evidence or opt out like anti-vaxers do out of fear.
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