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This week's guest is one of my absolute favourites Anna Dalziel, RSLP also known as Anna Dee SLP! Anna works primarily with 3-6 year olds with severe speech and language delays. Anna loves play based therapy, treating speech sound disorders, and working closely with families and school staff.

Find Anna's:
- Instagram
- FB Page
- Anna Dee SLP website and Anna's Communication Services website
- Teachers Pay Teachers page

We discuss late talkers, what SLPs assess other than word size in late talkers, pre-verbal skills, strategies to help late talkers and other kiddos in need of some SLP supports, how to differentiate between Autism and a late talker, and why Anna loves play-based therapy. We also talk about play milestones and how symbolic play relates to language development.

Note: Two things we want to emphasize is (1) make sure to always get a hearing test in addition to an SLP assessment and (2) most late talkers still have difficulties by age five and therefore they still require SLP intervention.

Click here for a helpful article on symbolic play and click here for the link for the research discussed below.

Research has shown us that Late Talkers (LT) follow one of these paths:
- Between 20–30% of LT do not grow out of their language delay. These children have ongoing difficulties and need intervention to help them with their language and literacy skills. They may receive a diagnosis of language disorder.
- Between 70–80% of LT seem to catch up to their peers by the time they enter school. Sometimes these children are called “late bloomers” because they eventually seem to catch up to other children their age. When their “general language skills” are tested, they score in the average range, which might tell us not to worry anymore. But research tells us that these children still have difficulties that we should not ignore.
- LT who seem to catch up continue to have some weaknesses
- LT who seem to “grow out of it” are working at a disadvantage when it comes to developing later language and literacy skills
- While these differences might seem small, it means that LT who seem to “grow out of it” are working at a disadvantage when it comes to developing later language skills. 

“Late bloomers” who seem to catch up actually show weaknesses in these areas:
- Some language & literacy skills – these include vocabulary, grammar, phonology, reading, understanding and creating stories, writing, and listening comprehension. These subtle weaknesses can continue through adolescence
- Other skills that are related to language – these are skills that rely on language, such as social skills, behaviour, and executive function skills
- How the brain processes speech – researchers have studied 3 to 5-year olds who had a history of late talking, and noticed that they don’t process the speech they hear as easily as other children do. This means that they have immature or less developed speech processing skills, which can interfere with their progress with language and literacy development

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