What a very interesting way of putting your point across.

Learning to talk is something most people take for granted because it comes naturally to them & their kids/family. In Pinas most especially most oldies tend to say the kid will catch up & the tendency would be to say the kid is “slow” because he doesn’t comprehend simple instructions.

I have never been interested in the ears & their functions until my son’s speech was blatantly delayed. I don’t think he has a learning disability (I checked the site you posted before), but his development was definitely impeded by the fact that he could only hear 20% of the sounds around him. So yes like in your post’s suggestion, we worked closely with him teaching him the basics of the spoken word. Though he’s better there still is a long way to go.

My concern now is because we want him to master “speaking” & “hearing”, we concentrated on English. I decided it will be tough to evaluate him if he’s confused with two languages. Now I don’t know when I should start teaching him Tagalog. I try now & then but hubby insists we shouldn’t until my son’s reached key milestones for his age (3 y/o).

• Auee, that post should have been longer, more like a text book list of symptoms. But then, I just thought about what I have observed with my students and used some of these. Hope we can meet when you get to visit the Philippines so we can do a home program for your son. In the meantime, just do what you think is best for him and follow the orders of your speech pathologist, if you find these agreeable and fits what your child needs.

I have communication problems too. I have a problem following a thread of conversation when its too complicated and paliko liko .. like when they’re talking of A and then of A’s husband and then the friend of A;s husband. Parang dapat linear lang so I can understand. Pag maraming liko, I lose them or they lose me. I also have a listening problem — I can’t listen to a phone conversation for more than 30 minutes at a time. I can’t also listen to high-decibel voices — i don’t have tolerance. When I talk .. i also tend to a lose a thread of thought. i tend to stammer and get distracted. etc. etc. ang dami pa. so i am better off blogging or chatting online. better read than heard wika nga. hehe

Oo nga pala, when i read your post in my site about taking pictures of sunflowers in UP, i almost fell off my chair. Because at that time, i had just come into the office after having pictures taken with the sunflowers in University avenue. You know i work in the diliman campus, don’t you?

I just found that very very interesting.

• Annamanila, when topics become complicated, especially about people you don’t know, it is quite hard to follow the thread. Listening and talking on the telephone beyond 30 minutes is an art that I am rather good at. High-decibel voices, that’s not tolerable too but it all depends upon the situation. A student of mine abhors listening to someone singing, one doesn’t like to hear people cheering and clapping, another doesn’t like the sound of musical toys, and my son doesn’t like the sound of loud, vibrating music. Hmm..I guessing my eldest daughter doesn’t like the sound of my voice when I’m angry, hehehe. You can write well so you definitely don’t have an expressive language developmental delay. I took some photos, yes, around 5pm, but I’m going back to get better shots. I’m using my MIL’s cam which I can’t operate properly since my brother bought mine a few weeks ago and I haven’t got a new one for myself. Btw, where is your office, I might visit you there, if we happen to go to UP on weekdays.

Thanks for the offer Julie. I would love to meet you when we go home next time, pero matagal pa yun. And I will want to meet with you regardless of Kelvin’s progress. I’ve yet to meet any bloggers pa.

• Auee, can you email me the program that the therapists are doing for your son? I would consult with our speech-language therapists about what else you can do to help him. Looking forward to meeting you. Hope you can make it on May 26, kahit through virtual presence.

I have a 23-year old son who is a semester short of finishing an Associate in Arts degree in Arts & Sciences from Kalayaan College. It has been a long, uphill battle getting him to where he is right now. When he was 3, a speech pathologist confirmed what I had suspected for a while – that he was showing speech delay & needed to have speech therapy sessions. At 11, a neuropsychologist diagnosed his condition as Mixed Receptive-Expressive Language Disorder. His education, starting from pre-school up to college has been a constant source of challenges. But he has somehow managed to overcome them with the help of his teachers and school administrators who have gone out of their way to understand his limitations.
There are no cures, no assurance of a miracle that he will one day be able to comprehend the world as most of us do. And therefore lead the elusive “normal” life we wish that children like him could have. But overcoming many of the difficulties that have been thrown his way is reason enough to share in his pride on what he has accomplished!

• Congratulations! Very few who are with learning disabilities are able to go through the turbulent teenage years with confidence and acceptance. You must have nurtured your son with love and the proper guidance. As I sometimes think, the labels/diagnoses are just that, labels, where you get the textbook descriptions of what the problem(s) are. But if proper intervention measures are not taken, these labels are useless. Yes, miracles and cures will not happen. But in the long run, what we do in the interests of our children would prove beneficial, to us and most especially to them. As parents, we do not go to great lengths to help ourselves, but to help them, our children.

[...] one of the most difficult tasks children with developmental problems can do, especially those with Language Learning problems. Several  of my students have this problem, with grades in the Language subject bordering on the [...]