Parenting: 4 & 5-Year-Olds Community

One interesting thing to note about this study, that was not really made clear in the articles I read on MSNBC and CNN is that it excludes autistic and add/adhd children. This study is only for neurologically normal children and in a way I think it promoted a bit of a fall sense of security for parents not to worry if their 2 year old wasn't really talking.

I have 2 late talking nephews. The older one started talking in full sentences not long after his 2nd birthday. He just wasn't a babbler or one word type of kid. Because of this, the pedi my SIL went to more or less blew off the fact my youngest nephew wasn't talking by 2 and said 'wait and see' without scheduling him for any sort of evaluation or really looking at other developmental milestones. I realize docs only get 10-15 minutes with a patient, but how hard is it to tell a parent to schedule a meeting with EI? about the only thing he did was schedule a hearing check (good, but not enough).

When he turned 3, she finally got a new pedi. after a couple of months with the new pedi where she observed the nephew, SIL finally was recommended to EI and at almost 4 he was diagnosed as autistic and referred to EI preschool. He is just now starting to talk and getting better with his sensory issues almost a year later, but there was 2-3 years lost because of a doc taking a speech delay 'wait and see' because that was all he looked at and not any other red flags - red flags I saw when he was about 2.5 (for familial harmony reasons, I couldn't bring this up to SIL who was in hard denial her boy was 'off') because he behaved so differently from my 2 year old DD such as not playing with his brothers or really interacting with anyone.

The versions I read really should have stressed that parents still need to push for an evaluation if they feel their kid is off.