This is a combined is this normal/advice needed post. I have a 10-year-old stepdaughter who we see a few times a year.
She does have ADHD and has had significant difficulty getting up to grade level in reading. However, I’ve noticed this year that she still has some very odd problems with speech, specifically using the correct words to convey her meaning.
She most commonly mixes up related verbs and prepositions. For example, the other day she stated that Mom got a text message from someone, when she really meant that Mom sent a text message to that person. She might also say something like “He threw the ball” to mean “I threw the ball to him”.
Other examples include mixing up things like beside/on top of/underneath.
To what extent is this normal? To me, it seems like something a much younger child would do.
In terms of correcting this, I give her examples of the proper use of the word when I realize she’s made a mistake, but she’s only around a few weeks out of the year.
This is not normal for a ten-year-old. I’ve never heard of this kind of error in a child that age, and I think it would be worth having her evaluated by a professional.
It isn’t normal, not in a monolingual ten year old. There is a strong association between ADHD and language processing disorders, particularly children with the inattentive subtype. Exactly what the relationship is was anybody’s guess the last time I was really involved in the subject a couple of years ago. However at that time the balance of the research was pointing at the language problem adn the ADHD being independent but comorbid – that is, treating the one did not necessarily help the other.
Thanks…this backs up my desire to get her tested; now we simply have to persuade her mom (who normally has custody).
Part of the issue is that my partner’s side of the family has weird speech and communications patterns, and I try to be careful not to come off as critiquing them.
The other big issue, which I recalled as I looked at symptom lists for language processing disorders, is that she is very vague in her questions to the point where we sometimes can’t understand what’s being asked. Her favorite is “What?” or “What is that about?”, but this can mean just about anything from “Why are those people yelling at each other?” to “What does that green sign mean?”
That kind of language mixup can indicate a type of dyslexia. Although most people think of dyslexia as the b=p=d stuff, there are actually over 300 kinds.
May I ask, what does “weird speech and communication patterns” mean?