Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child has it. It was severe younger. Now its very mild and a few minor struggles but child is very different and doing great. Does well in sports, standardized testing, no behavioral issues nor any other diagnosis. It isn't gloom or doom. Like anything its hard to predict. We were told by Dr. Camarata that our child would learn to adapt in the weaker areas and be fine. Some of it depends on IQ too. Kids with higher IQ's seem to have a better outcome (which isn't a surprise).

Best thing to do is from 3-5/6, do intensive speech therapy, not just county or PEP. Consider LEAP as it is the only program that specializes in language at UMD.

Also, for the first few years of school, you may want to consider private. I think that helped a lot as the school we were at was very nurturing but still kept the same expectations.

Public school is a worthless for services and supports. They do not understand it so don't expect anything and do it at home.

Thank you! I have been curious about when he goes to kindergarten. Luckily we still have some time. I have heard that PEP is amazing though, and even teachers at private school recommend it. Did you not feel it was enough? I was planning to only do private speech once a week but maybe I will reconsider..

If your child doesn’t have any other dev issues, you should ask the county for the language preK program. This is specific to language. My child, with the same diagnosis, did it for almost 3 years and it was great.

Anonymous wrote:OP, my child has severe MERLD along with auditory processing issues and a learning disorder. So his prognosis has been much more difficult than that of so many other MERLD children we know. In high school, he is in a mix of regular classes and special ed classes.

Typically the outcome hinges on receptive language. When your child's receptive language catches up, the rest of their issues fade out. Some still have anxiety because of the years of being behind. Some have to compensate if their receptive remains somewhat weak, but they learn to. And while I know people are all about early intervention, in my experience, the only fix for receptive language is time.

Let me know if you have other questions.

Early intervention was good to give them the tools they needed when they were ready to talk, but agree time really made a huge difference. Not what people want to hear. I always wonder if there was any point to all the early intervention or would my child have been the same if we didn't do it, but I wasn't going to chance it. I suspect looking back it would have all come in its own time. However, the speech therapy was helpful with the structure of how to talk and giving them a memory bank to draw from when they were ready. Many go into speech therapy thinking it will fix it. If your child catches up quickly they probably would have regardless of the therapy as that was their time to catch up.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, my child has severe MERLD along with auditory processing issues and a learning disorder. So his prognosis has been much more difficult than that of so many other MERLD children we know. In high school, he is in a mix of regular classes and special ed classes.

Typically the outcome hinges on receptive language. When your child's receptive language catches up, the rest of their issues fade out. Some still have anxiety because of the years of being behind. Some have to compensate if their receptive remains somewhat weak, but they learn to. And while I know people are all about early intervention, in my experience, the only fix for receptive language is time.

Let me know if you have other questions.

Did you feel like school helped your son along or did it make him more frustrated?

In his case I think preschool helped quite a bit. He was eager to be around other kids and to experience new things. He definitely spoke more in school settings, and that carried on into home.

K on through high school has been very hard. People don't understand language disorders because they are so focused on ASD. The differences in my kid and others in special ed is stark. So similar in many ways if you look from a distance, but so different when you drill down.

And personally, I have found most SLPs aren't that great. They have a very forced, didactic style that doesn't build natural speech. I saw this clearly when he had an impromptu speech session with Mary Camarata in Nashville. It was amazing how much language she got out of my son -- and she said nothing at all.

The Hanen Method out of Canada is very helpful. Parents and families spend so much more time with their child than any therapist.

Very very few good SLP's sadly. That was our experience too. We had one we loved but after mid-elementary school, it really wasn't helpful anymore. We ended up dropping it per the developmental ped and SLP to allow for the more natural speech to come since much of it was very forced sounding early on which is why its often confused for ASD when its how these kids have been trained for years.

The Camarata's really get these kids. But, Dr. Camarata doesn't write his own reports so our report was useless and he wouldn't help us get a better one. His advice was correct, but not really all helpful as he liked what we were doing - school, SLP, progress so he said not to change anything, which is what we went for to see what we could do differently. (technically that's a good thing).

For us, I think the one thing that helps is we don't have any LD's and my child likes to learn. We didn't do the Hanen method that many recommend but we spent a lot of time early years on basic academics and handwriting - handwriting was a huge struggle at first like many kids on here but we kept at it and did lots of workbooks and it finally paid off. I think getting them early and giving a good foundation is the best thing. I knew the play based was not best for our child and the academic route was better. My child read before they talked so that really helped the talking and everything else.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, my child has severe MERLD along with auditory processing issues and a learning disorder. So his prognosis has been much more difficult than that of so many other MERLD children we know. In high school, he is in a mix of regular classes and special ed classes.

Typically the outcome hinges on receptive language. When your child's receptive language catches up, the rest of their issues fade out. Some still have anxiety because of the years of being behind. Some have to compensate if their receptive remains somewhat weak, but they learn to. And while I know people are all about early intervention, in my experience, the only fix for receptive language is time.

Let me know if you have other questions.

Did you feel like school helped your son along or did it make him more frustrated?

Not this poster and my child doesn't have anxiety but we've had a really bad public school experience as like PP the school doesn't really understand this style of language disorder and assumes its ADHD or ASD and they basically have set up our child not to ask for help given the classroom style. Our experience in a regular private was much different. Teachers were not specifically trained but patient and really took that time and I think having that early on made a huge difference. An IEP is only as good as those working with your child and its worthless if they don't follow it or don't care. We dropped our IEP as it was doing more harm than good. Time is really the only fix for receptive language. Speech therapy gives them tools when they are ready to talk but you cannot force speech and it comes when it comes. Our biggest issue has been because the group/center work is very verbal child cannot always express thoughts so they get penalized into lower groups because of the verbal issue. The SLP at school refused to work on issues related to school work and does her own thing which is relevant to the other kids in the group, but not my child. I was against standardized tests, like the MAP until I realized it was the only way to prove my child was far more capable than they believe.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, my child has severe MERLD along with auditory processing issues and a learning disorder. So his prognosis has been much more difficult than that of so many other MERLD children we know. In high school, he is in a mix of regular classes and special ed classes.

Typically the outcome hinges on receptive language. When your child's receptive language catches up, the rest of their issues fade out. Some still have anxiety because of the years of being behind. Some have to compensate if their receptive remains somewhat weak, but they learn to. And while I know people are all about early intervention, in my experience, the only fix for receptive language is time.

Let me know if you have other questions.

Did you feel like school helped your son along or did it make him more frustrated?

In his case I think preschool helped quite a bit. He was eager to be around other kids and to experience new things. He definitely spoke more in school settings, and that carried on into home.

K on through high school has been very hard. People don't understand language disorders because they are so focused on ASD. The differences in my kid and others in special ed is stark. So similar in many ways if you look from a distance, but so different when you drill down.

And personally, I have found most SLPs aren't that great. They have a very forced, didactic style that doesn't build natural speech. I saw this clearly when he had an impromptu speech session with Mary Camarata in Nashville. It was amazing how much language she got out of my son -- and she said nothing at all.

The Hanen Method out of Canada is very helpful. Parents and families spend so much more time with their child than any therapist.

Anonymous wrote:OP, my child has severe MERLD along with auditory processing issues and a learning disorder. So his prognosis has been much more difficult than that of so many other MERLD children we know. In high school, he is in a mix of regular classes and special ed classes.

Typically the outcome hinges on receptive language. When your child's receptive language catches up, the rest of their issues fade out. Some still have anxiety because of the years of being behind. Some have to compensate if their receptive remains somewhat weak, but they learn to. And while I know people are all about early intervention, in my experience, the only fix for receptive language is time.

Let me know if you have other questions.

Did you feel like school helped your son along or did it make him more frustrated?