It’s kind of a myth that kids catch up on their own. What happens is they make progress but they likely don’t ever reach their full potential. I’d be concerned if I was your daughter. And I would have them evaluated yesterday. What you’re describing, by age three, is a significant language delay. They should be saying short sentences by now.
How are their communication skills? Do they point when they need something? Do they do a lot of hand leading? Do they have simple conversations? Do they show objects to you just to share them (as opposed to wanting you to do something)?
Are you sure they have their own language as opposed to babbling/vocal stimming? Echolalia? (Repeating words, or using rote phrases?)
When my son was two he had a pretty extensive vocabulary and it tricked me into thinking he was on track. I eventually figured out it was all rote language. Using the exact same words every time to request something or comment on something. He wasn’t using spontaneous language at all. It tricked a lot of people who didn’t know him well because if you haven’t heard him say it 1,000 times before it sounds like normal talking.
For example, he says “All done eating!” When he’s done eating. He learned this from me asking him, “Are you all done eating?” But the words didn’t have discrete meaning to him. He knew what it meant but not by individual word, as evidenced by the fact that he often shortened it to “All eating!” It was just a rote phrase. (Now he says, “You’re all done eating” because he gets his pronouns mixed up. But he uses a lot more spontaneous language.)
Every kid is different. I am told I didn’t walk till I was 17 months. That’s late, but it didn’t mean anything. Two of my children started talking at around 15 months and were quite verbal. The third one didn’t talk till around 2, but then came out in complete sentences. He has written three books, so his language was not affected.
Here is a story that startled me so I wrote down the date. My granddaughter was 29 months and 5 days old. Her older brother had pushed her over and was being punished by being confined to the house, while we were all in the backyard. After a few minutes he opened the door he was behind and yelled to his sister: “Come and get me out of here.” She ran towards him, saying “I will come and get you out of there.” Kids are not supposed to get control of pronouns (changing an implied you to I, a me to you, not to mention here to there which is not a pronoun change but similar) till about 4.
They’ve been evaluated. Daughter insisted.
She’s a worrier. She has a downs syndrome sister so they are super cautious in that family.
The twins actually are pretty typical in other ways. The older sisters and cousins are around them all the time. They have sophisticated play. I’m amazed at the Lego building they do. Skipped right over stacking blocks(Lego are a big thing with all the grandwrex).
They know exactly what you’re asking of them, not saying they always comply. No! Is their favorite word, in unison.
We’ve had squash from the garden for a few weeks. It seems we eat it everyday. They Do Not like it. They have learned the word. They say it like “quish” Mom puts it on their plate and it’s “noquish”.
Now we all call it noquish.
Which is incorrect. We should say it properly. But it’s fun to say.
Their hearing is fine.
The twin language is a real language, to them. The audiologist said they obviously have meaning between them. DIL ask her should they learn it. She told her not to even try. It would delay ‘normal’ language development even more.
Amongst them all it’s been decided they are neuro-typical with language delays due to twinsies. And into a small group pre-school/play group. Be watchful.
Fully potty trained.
I’m glad they got evaluated. Better to do it than not, just in case.
I understand that kids who grow up in bilingual households can develop language later, and maybe this is the same kind of thing?
The “noquish” story is adorable. My younger child, when you ask him to do something and he will do it but would like to register his disapproval, started saying “Nokay!” when he was about that age. It has become a word in common currency in our house ever since thenbecause it’s a great and efficient way of saying “I’ll do it but I really don’t want to” but without having to use all those words!
As long as some kind of professional is involved and is not concerned, I wouldn’t worry about it.
Just in terms of whether/when to get an evaluation it’s always better to err on the side of caution. Because that age is so malleable and the older the kids get, the harder it is to learn new skills.
If we had waited for caregivers to express concern for our son’s development, we’d still be waiting. A lot of them don’t want to speak up because the parents’ reaction can be so negative. Others just don’t have the training or experience to know what to look for. When you’re taking care of thirteen kids you aren’t looking too closely at the development of each one, just the ones who are standing out/causing disruption.
Likewise the pediatrician wasn’t worried until the three-year checkup, and by then we were already scheduled for a bridge eval based on our own concerns.
Well, Spice, I have to say about the WeeWeasel and what you guys have gone through made me start being concerned, at least a year ago, about the twins and the middle daughter of that family group. I talked the my Son and DIL back then. To have them all evaluated. And they did.
I was glad I had read all your tales, trials and tribulations and knew enough to be on the lookout.
You’ve done a great job noticing your son was neuro-atypical, and advocating and providing for his needs. We only have one child, neither of us had experience with little kids, so we did not notice our child had ASD. They were very verbal very early, so we didn’t have that cue.
In their first year of public school pre-school the teacher would tell us about problems, which put me in the thought of why is she picking on our kid? Eventually the teacher communicated it wasn’t just some minor behavioral issues, but was something bigger, and got the kid an IEP. Despite my initial prickly feeling towards that teacher, she was exactly right. The public schools here require the pre-school teachers to have a masters in special ed or early childhood development, and it paid off for us.
Eventually we were able to get them evaluated, and diagnosed with ASD, which helped to tune the IEP.
@Beckdawrek Y’all have done the right things. Based on my experience, I wouldn’t be worried. Maybe there is something neuro-divergent going on, who’s the say? I guess their situation is night and day compared with my youngest.
From my experience as a parent, it’s kinda like a dashboard with a lot of different indicators. It appears like one indicator is red lining, but all the other ones are in the normal range. For my youngest, every one of the indicators was red lining.
@echoreply Wow, IEP vs a 504 plan is a mighty big difference. Do you mind if I ask if the IEP is still used? In a mainstream class with support or in a special needs class?
Yes, they’re going into 6th grade in the fall, and are still on the IEP. I’m not sure what a 504 plan is, but I guess I could look it up. Most of the IEP has been accommodations and goals. For example, getting to do a test in a quiet room, and 2 or fewer elopements from the classroom in a week.
There is a number written down, but the true goal is as much time in the regular classroom as possible. I think it was over 80% achieved in 5th grade. The resource class, which is the today word for special ed, is mostly a space they can retreat to when things get overwhelming.
Sixth grade is the setup where kids move to different teachers’ classrooms. There is a homeroom period, and all kids on IEPs have their homeroom with the resource teacher, so everyone gets a chance to checkin every day.
Most of my kid’s issues are emotional, not intellectual (but if “executive function” was a stat (wis?), it would be around 6). Like many kids, they have trouble with self motivation, and respond badly to external pressure to do things. Except up that to a pathological level, so instead of a bit of back talk it turns into a full on meltdown.
Speaking of melt downs, tantrums and fussing the Twins are about the most even tempered babies I’ve ever seen. Easy infants. The terrible twos were the best. The sweetest and loving little boys. Only cranky when ill. Because of COVID lockdowns that was rare.
The yak back began during potty training.
They just did not want to do it.
They didn’t mind going in with Daddy. Or the older grandson cousins. Sitting was the problem.
She changed to on the toilet seat instead of a stand alone chair. We got one here at my house.
As soon as things worked the first few times. It was not a thing anymore.
But very rarely they have a wet night. When one pees at night they both do. With out fail.
Oddest thing.
Do they both feel the urgency at the same time because of some woo twin stuff or because they eat and drink similarly?
This is my son. Even when he gets upset he calms down quickly. We seem to go through the developmental stages just a little bit late. So he’s currently in his tantrum phase. Which is nothing. I notice he gets upset more easily, but he just doesn’t stay upset long. In his whole life he’s had maybe two autistic meltdowns, but even then, we’re talking fifteen minutes tops.
Case in point, we get him to brush his teeth by letting him watch videos for a short time. Yesterday he did not want to get off videos. Usually he fast forwards to the end so he can watch the last 30 seconds or so, which I am fine with. But this time he kept arguing back and demanding more time. So I just took the phone away.
He did not like this. He whined about it for a minute, especially since we went straight from that into picking up toys, another thing he didn’t want. So he argued with me about that. I told him he wasn’t going to do anything fun today until his toys were cleaned up. After about five minutes he started picking up his toys and he was fine.
I’ve yet to have an issue where threatening a consequence didn’t work. I think only once did we have to withhold videos because of his behavior. So he understands that very well, I think. (My only real issue there is I’m not sure what else I can do in terms of consequences besides videos… Sometimes we’re talking about what’s going to happen at the end of the day so it’s harder for him to draw a connection between behavior and consequences.)
What happens to the kids who are never evaluated? I know a woman whose son is obviously “different”. He was suspended from kindergarten twice for doing some crazy things. (He told a girl he didn’t like that his mom carried a big knife in her purse and she was going to chop the girl up when she came to pick him up) The little girl believed him and freaked out/became hysterical.
The school keeps suggesting things and the mom keeps refusing.
The boy’s father shares custody of his son and daughter, but refuses any contact with the boy, because he is “weird”.
Oh, lord.
I hope there’s a net within the school system for these kinda children.
If the parents and school can’t/won’t agree the kid will grow up hard. Poor kid.
@Spice_Weasel , future punishment and having instant consequences (to go brush teeth or pick-up playthings) are 2 different things.
In my parenting experience the “tomorrow you can’t do XX” if you don’t do your chores today, hardly ever work.
My middle aged ( age 6 to 12) kids could care less about tomorrow. Today, right now they’d rather do what they want. Tomorrow may never come.
When they hit a proper teen age, have a bit of maturity you can say “ok your weekend plans are cancelled, if you don’t do ??” They understand future consequences the way the very young can’t.
Taking the video device away is the same as my Daddy yanking the book I was reading outta my hand to get me up and moving. Boy, I hated that. As soon as I was told to do ???, I got up.
Punishments and loss of privileges are valuable parenting tools that I lamented having to do.
I saved them for only egregious misbehaving.
I was a soft parent but I knew I must teach them to understand bad behavior = bad rewards.
Pick and choose your battles. Everyone will be happier.
Right, but the question is what can I do in the moment that’s age appropriate for a four year old? Tried sending him to his room once but it wasn’t clear that he understood it as a punishment.
The safety rules are the most important ones. We try to emphasize that all the time. The only time he got videos taken away was for disobeying the No Climbing on the Counter safety rule, and that was after several warnings. But he still got books before bed. I think no videos was punishment enough.
Overall he is a good kid. He likes to test limits sometimes but all kids do.
Take away (fun thing) is really about all you can do at age 4.
Kids are all about pleasing themselves with the fun stuff. You can’t expect self regulation. (Heck, my 30yo still struggles with this).
I hate hate to hear parents saying(yelling) “I told you to stop, your ??fun thing is taken away, when we get home” repeatedly.
I’ve seen it, so often, going down in a public place.
I swear if my kid was whining, fussing, taking things off store shelves, poking baby sister in a grocery store I would grab their hand and walk out before I stand in an aisle hollering at them.
You’re only teaching the child you, yourself are out of control.
There are kids who will test every limit and seem to get on your last nerve. Seems they always do it in public.
Son-of-a-wreks second daughter is like this. No matter what they do she has always got problems.
6 yo. Just out of first grade and she can melt down like a two year old for seemingly nothing. Or it’s some big dramatic explanation, now that she’s older and very vocal. No amount of explanation, encouragement can talk her down. She gets her jaw set and that’s all she wrote. They’ve left many activities because of it.
Yet, is the perfect citizen at school. Model student. No behavior problems in class. Seems to love school.
We can’t figure it out.
Son says he thinks she doesn’t like the family she was born into. Facetiously.
There’s some middle child syndrome, for sure.
Older, very accomplished sister, below her an adorable set of twin boys.
I feel so bad for her sometimes. She’s a pretty child and can be very charming. But boy she can disrupt when it hits her.
I worry for her. I hope maturity will help her regulate these things.
Trouble with my kid is they immediately don’t want whatever was taken away as a consequence, or didn’t want to do the thing that they were planning. “You can have your tablet when you pick up your mess.” “I don’t want my tablet!” or “You need to shower before you can go to your friend’s house.” “I don’t want to go now.” I know in many ways it is just a debate tactic.
And that crafty bit I’m doing where I’m not setting it up as a punishment, but as a reward to be earned (cleaning = tablet instead of mess \ne tablet) is also a total failure. Apparently it worked on me, my kid views punishment and having to earn a privilege as the same thing.
The serious side is that with a deficit in executive function, it can be very difficult for them to associate actions and consequences. Intellectually they understand, and can explain it, but emotionally they just don’t get it.
That was me and my dad. We’d get in an argument over some chores or something, then he’d send me to my room, which is where I wanted to be in the first place.
I never quite believed the “just wants attention” thing until I was a parent. It sure does explain some of the transgressive behavior, though.
Haha, my adolescent kid was like this when she was younger.
I had the opposite problem! When Older Kid was younger and had a lot of problems with extremely loud meltdowns, I would have her go to her room – not as a punishment but simply because the rest of us should be able to hang out in common spaces without having to listen to her loud meltdowns. But she often regarded it as a punishment.
Oh, this is my younger one. He is such a good kid, but he can totally do the super-annoying “how about this? What about this? NA NA NA NA NA” kind of thing and it’s so clear to me that he’s just looking for attention. Not quite as clear to my husband, and I had to model some responses for him: “hey, I know you’re looking for attention, I’m busy right now, check back in five minutes” or “okay, here is some ATTENTION! Hug and kiss attack!!” – now he gets it. (My husband is more likely to do a tickle attack.)
Younger kid and his older sister totally do the “Mooooom! He’s touching me!” “I’m not touching you!” and then I look and he’s got his hand like one centimeter from her (and of course she’s not moving away, so she can complain). It’s so cliche and I never believed that kids actually did that (my sister and I didn’t really), but yeah, this is our house just about every day. I say that enough to them though that sometimes they do joke about it: “Mooooom, he hit my fist with his body!” (They don’t do it hard enough to hurt when they do that kind of joke, of course!)