Six-Year-Old Autistic Son's Speech Results Very Strange

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My six-year-old son recently had a speech evaluation (Test of Language Development--Primary), and the following results were obtained:

Picture Vocabulary: 13 Scaled Score 84% rank
Relational Vocabulary: 13 Scaled Score 84% rank
Oral Vocabulary: 5 Scaled Score 5 % rank
Syntactic Understanding: 11 Scaled Score 63 % rank
Sentence Imitation: 8 Scaled Score 25 % rank
Morphological Completion 11 Scaled Score 63 % rank

He was speech delayed (still has expressive speech issues) and has had done extensive work with visual aids and can sight word read. He has gone up from an overall ranking of bottom 1% in November 2007 to an overall ranking of 8 % currently.

Has anyone out there been to speech therapy/can tell me what these scores mean? Did anyone have this kind of learning pattern but get better?

When you got these results, didn't the evaluator explain them to you? The person who does the evaluation is really in the best position to explain them, because there is more to the evaluation than just the scores. Putting that aside, it looks (from the scores) like your son's receptive language is very good, and it is "only" the expressive language where your son is struggling. While a 7% increase might not seem huge, it really is a very significant increase in his abilities, especially at his age(s). Between the ages of three and six, when your son started speech therapy and now, the expressive language growth in his peer group is enormous, so for him to "move up the ladder" when compared to those peers is a big deal.

Part of the improvement in speech is developmental, but without the intervention of a good speech and language pathologist, the child won't be able to make the most of his developmental growth to maximize his language development. Many children who receive good speech and language services see huge improvement in their language - and many children continue to receive those services for many years. They key is that the services be good ones, and that they change as the child grows, to meet the child's language needs and developmental level.

Actually, other than group speech therapy for four months in 2009, my son has been getting exclusively home-based speech therapy. (I've been doing it, making the materials, using stuff purchased on-line).

My parents paid for a private speech test in 2007 but did not offer to pay for private services, and I had no insurance for it until this year. My son was tested for public services twice in 2008 but denied.

I was certified to teach English ages ago, went to grad school in English, and but taught for only a few months. I did very well in a couple of linguistics courses, but never received any formal speech training.

I have been teaching my son based on my own intuition as much as anything else--I don't really know what the heck I'm doing from a technical standpoint. So I see improvement, but I don't really know what it means from an academic standpoint and have no other speech clients with whom to compare him.

Since, from what it sounds like, you now have insurance, it would be a good idea to resume professional speech therapy for your son. Ask the therapist to share with you what she is working on, and how you can best support the work she is doing at home. Most speech therapists are happy to keep the parents involved, so that there is consistency between the therapeutic and home environment. You can also learn a lot about the concepts behind what is being done, which will help you, not only in supporting the current work, but also in anticipating how to help your son in the future.

there is an excellent book "More Than Words: Helping Parents Promote Communication and Social Skills in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder" by Sussman for children that begin to talk and other one "TalkAbility: People Skills for Verbal Children on the Autism Spectrum - A Guide for Parents" from the same author for kids that are more advanced. They overlap somewhat and the first one is more elaborate.

sound like classic ASD. Expressive language delay is a hallmark of the disorder. It shows why so many of those on the Spectrum excel at visual communication strategies but struggle with expressing themselves verbally. Support the child's verbal skills with lots of visuals and usually the expressive skills improve more quickly.

I'd ask the speech therapist what the scores mean b/c whatever testing systems were used will determine what the results mean.

Actually, I think I know what to (or at least one effective method). I had to use full visual aids and teach him to sight word read in order to get this far.

I admit that I will not mind surrendering practical/social speech to a therapist, since I am more of a reading person than an everyday speech person.

I definitely feel that he has classic autism. I have had a number of teachers and other people try to put him in a different box because he is doing well.

It is mainly that I want to know about the experiences of others in my boat--where they started, where they ended up, and how they got there.