Beyond Words: Parenting Through Speech Delays and Developmental Challenges

"You can't make that kid do a damn thing." These words echoed through my mind as I reflected on the unique journey of parenting my strong-willed, neurodivergent son. The path has been anything but straightforward, filled with unexpected challenges, tearful breakthroughs, and moments of profound doubt.

When Grant was born in June 2020—our COVID baby—we noticed his babbling seemed to taper off around seven months old. What followed was a winding road through early intervention, speech therapy, occupational therapy, and eventually an IEP with a developmental delay diagnosis. As any parent of a child with communication difficulties knows, when language is delayed, behaviors often intensify. Our home became a battleground of emotions and tantrums as Grant struggled to express his needs in a world that felt overwhelming to him.

The most challenging aspect wasn't just the therapies or the mid-year school change we recently navigated—it was the constant questioning. Was this typical boy behavior? Was it because we speak Spanish at home? Was I failing him somehow? Just this week, after Grant graduated from speech therapy but continues to struggle with potty training, a pediatric pelvic floor specialist validated what my heart knew all along: "Claire, rewards and sticker charts don't work for these issues." Those words brought me to tears. Sometimes the greatest relief comes from hearing that you're not doing it wrong—the typical solutions just don't apply to your unique situation.

For parents walking similar paths with neurodivergent children or those with developmental differences, I want you to know you're not alone. Our kids who live by their own internal rules and rhythms are teaching us profound lessons about patience, acceptance, and finding joy in unexpected progress. They're showing us different ways of experiencing the world—even when that experience tests our limits as parents. If you're in the trenches of this beautiful, challenging journey, reach out. Share your story. Let's build community around these experiences that can feel so isolating but are more common than we realize. Because while I may not be an expert, I am a fellow traveler on this road, figuring it out one day at a time.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing MomTalk Maryland
• 0:47 Grant's Early Speech Challenges
• 6:01 School Transitions and Therapy
• 13:20 Potty Training Struggles
• 18:55 Finding Support and Validation
• 23:20 You're Not Alone

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey friends and welcome to MomTalk, maryland. I'm your host, claire Duarte, founder of the Columbia Mom, and this is your spot for real conversations, local love and a whole lot of community, whether you're folding laundry, running errands or hiding in your car for some peace and quiet, let's dive in. So, on this week's episode, I figured I would jump into talking about some parenting struggles that we have gone through immensely with our son, and for any moms or parents that maybe have some neurodivergent kids in your household, I just want this to kind of be the moment in the space for you to know that I see you, I feel you and, to be honest, I feel like it's such a weird thing as a parent to be walking this line, because I feel like I'm just learning as I go. Right, my son is four and a half and we don't have a formal diagnosis Not that we're necessarily seeking one, but we've just kind of had a slew of different things that we've been working on over the years and in ways it gets better and then other ways it gets way harder, and it's been extremely challenging for us and I feel like it's the perfect parenting thing for me to jump into. To be honest, I don't call myself an expert on neurodivergent kids and neurodivergent diagnoses. For those of you that have been following around, you might know that I do have a master's degree in counseling psychology. Uh, I don't think that makes me an expert whatsoever. I have studied the field, but not specific to pediatrics or pediatric children. I did have an internship when I did therapy work with children, but again, not specific to um ADHD learning, um challenges and all the slew of things that come along with it. Right, all I can speak to you is our experience with our son, and that's what I wanted to share with you today. So if you've followed along on Instagram, you've maybe heard some of my things that I've shared with over the years.

Speaker 1: 1:57

But to give you a little bit of backstory, a little bit more context, my son, grant, was born in June 2020. So he is your typical COVID baby, as we like to say. He's also a boy. He's also. We are a bilingual household. I am not, but my husband is, and my in-laws speak Spanish and they are fluent, so my kids pick it up and they hear it around the house. I'm just saying all of that to say the daughter to son dynamic, the second born dynamic, if you know, you know. So there's a whole slew of assumptions that have been thrown at us for over the years oh he's a boy. Oh there's Spanish in the household, oh he's just a busy kid and too busy to be bothered with speech and things like that.

Speaker 1: 2:48

And as a parent, it's so hard to decipher through what is and isn't potentially a problem, right, because there are so many age appropriate things that they are also going through all these different milestones, all these different growths, both physically, mentally, emotionally, so it makes it so challenging to figure out what is the actual problem, what is actually going on? Right? And long story short, grant has a speech delay and we kind of started to pick up on that around seven months old, which is at six months old. We found out that he pick up on that around seven months old, which is at six months old. We found out that he had a peanut allergy, which sent us to, uh, the ER. And at seven months old we started the peanut OIT treatment and around that time I had started to hear him babbling and then, about a month or two later, I felt like I heard the babbling kind of stopped and then, about a month or two later, I felt like I heard the babbling kind of stopped and at the time that my pediatrician was like hmm, you know, you can potentially seek, you know, check in with a speech language pathologist, which we did.

Speaker 1: 3:55

And I think at that time is when we started to kind of put our paperwork in with Howard County Infants and Toddlers and it's all feeling so foggy to me now, but I'm basically just saying that I think I remember putting in all the paperwork, speaking with somebody, and they were like okay, if he doesn't have a first word by like I forget the milestone, like 14 to 17 months, something like that. Then they were like definitely come back to us. Well, he had like, or it was either one word or maybe up to five, something like that, and we had maybe one word, or maybe up to five, something like that, and we had maybe one word but not more than five. Ironically, both my kids' first word was agua. Go figure, definitely not mama for either of them, but he did say the one word, but we didn't have any more. Anyway, so at that time is when we got linked with infants and toddlers Meanwhile we're also doing the peanut OIT treatment. I just say that as like. I just feel like there's a lot going on orally for this kid. Anyway, it's not to give you so so, so, so. So much history and background.

Speaker 1: 4:55

But you know all of this is going on during COVID, both my kids were home with me full time. I was also trying to work, you know, full time from home for a while and it was obviously just very challenging. And you can imagine the kid, if you, if you've dealt with a kid that has some speech delay or any kind of speech issue or challenge, you know that when there's a lack of language there's usually a higher presence of behaviors. And that's exactly what we went through. So it was a of emotions, a lot of tantrums, because you know, when you can't communicate it's obviously very frustrating. It's gonna come out in some other form, right. So that made you know for a lot of challenging moments in our in our house and in our family, especially around bedtime, nap, nap time, and it, you know, when I was already the like primary parent, made him more attached to me but kind of like not allowing my husband to be like involved at all, which again kind of put the burden on me, which I was already doing, but it made it hard to split and balance parenting roles. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 6:06

So again, if you know, you know, so, fast forward, we do the infants and toddlers thing. I think you know. Forget it. I think two and a half that's when you can get assessed. To get a you have to go through the diagnosis process to continue to get services through the county, which we did. He got the diagnosis of central developmental delay, which is kind of like a nice kind of blanket statement of there's no formal diagnosis that we're seeing swaying one way or the other but still allows him to qualify for services. He got his first IEP written. We did the REC program and he got a lot of support and certainly we started to see a lot more emerging language. Some of those very intense behaviors started to kind of de-escalate a little bit with the higher presence of words, right, we kind of started to meet more of the middle. So behaviorally things were feeling better. We also.

Speaker 1: 7:06

He was also a late potty trainer Again, very typical, you hear that all the time with boys and we finally got him potty trained January of last year. So he was three and a half at the time, which again, when I say that, it doesn't sound all that late for again being a boy and all of those things. But if you know Grant and you know the challenges that speech and fine motor deficits have in that whole entire process, when you think of potty training, it's so very challenging and frankly, a year ago I didn't even register that he had fine motor deficits. It wasn't until more recently that I was, when he was in, started pre-k this past year and they were having him right that we really noticed it so much more and we're.

Speaker 1: 7:52

And then honestly, to be honest, I felt kind of guilty as a mom. I was like how did I not know that? How did I not see that? I literally did. I not see that. I've literally said from probably like birth that this kid's a gross motor kid. I've literally said that in my just vernacular and my brain just never really registered that oh, maybe high intense strengths and gross motor could mean for this kid I'm not saying as an assumption or blanket statement deficit in fine motor.

Speaker 1: 8:21

Other little examples that clue me in. Sorry that I'm bouncing around, but just you know, when he was six months old and I was trying to do baby led weaning, he didn't have pincher grasp and I remember feeling really guilty as a mom, that I was like basically trying to you know spoon feed my kid, even though they said that's a no, no, but he couldn't. He couldn't do it, so it. So I was like, okay, well, maybe he's not ready for it. So I was like trying to help him eat and learn how to eat, and he had a very, like you know, trouble grasping things because he would use, like a fist, not the, not your little fingies. Um, and again I felt there was a part of me that felt guilt and shame of like, oh, there's something wrong with me because maybe I'm not teaching him well enough or maybe I'm not exposing him in the right way.

Speaker 1: 9:07

The other reality with Grant was that he wasn't interested in things that might have more naturally helped encourage fine motor. Like people say, oh, I just would lay out you know crayons for my kids to, you know color and da da da. Grant to this day and his teachers know this and I laugh does not care for arts and crafts, pretty much of any kind. He does them based on need, like aka having to do it at school. At home he maybe picks it up very occasionally, but he is not interested, so he's naturally not inclined to do activities like that or, frankly, most anything that really involves fine motor. Has he gotten better over the years? Of course? But just kind of giving like little insight and examples. Sorry I'm bouncing around so fast.

Speaker 1: 10:01

Forward to a little bit more recently. You may have heard that he started pre-K in the fall at my daughter's school and we were working with the PALS team who would come on site to help give a little support, and our hope was that he could be at the same school with my daughter. And, long story short, we just realized he needed a little bit more support. So we had to transfer schools mid-year, which, to be honest, was very stressful for my husband and I. It's not entirely what we had wanted. We of course, want what's best for our kids.

Speaker 1: 10:41

I'll just admit that it's just a very challenging emotion when there's so many things in the air, and the change meant impacting our schedule a lot more and something that I selfishly felt really frustrated about. I'm like, of course you know. So now we're back to the two school drop, drop-off, two-school pickup, and not only were they going to be at two schools in two different directions, we were layering in speech therapy and OT and it felt very overwhelming. Long story short, we did make it through all that and I'll be the first to admit that when I'm staring down the barrel of changes and things like that, I know that they seem a lot worse than when we're actually in them. Because once we did the transition and we were in school, it's like, ok, this is our life now, right, and we were in it and we were doing it, and we still are right and it's fine. You know what I mean. Like we're okay, I'm no longer, I don't have this high, intense feeling of stress and rage and anger or anything like that. Like you know, like this is life and we're okay, we're good, right. So that's what I mean by, like staring down the barrel. It always seems worse when the idea of something always seems worse, even if I know it is a little frustrating. Idea of something always seems worse, even if I know it is a little frustrating.

Speaker 1: 12:02

So but more recently, this past week, he did actually graduate from speech. They felt that he they didn't, from the testing that they had done and all the observational data they were taking and obviously from all the observation reports I was sharing and things like that, that he didn't meet the criteria for any more speech disorders. But knowing that he was still going to be receiving speech support at school via his IEP and the speech pathologist there, we felt like it was a good plan. And it seems like so far, the schools aligned, we were sharing the data back and forth and we also had a recent IEP meeting with school. So, um, it feels weird, after going through so much in less than six months, to be ending this additional speech Cause I'm like I don't know, I just don't want him to regress. I mean, I know he's going to get be still getting speech support at school, but I just I'm nervous. It's weird. I'm definitely nervous, but on the other hand, I'm really glad that I'm like I get a little bit of my life back on Wednesdays. You know what I mean. I don't have to like run over to school, pick him up and take him over, you know. So that is a relief. I know that the work isn't done with speech, but he has made a lot of progress there.

Speaker 1: 13:25

There's still a lot of stuff that we're experiencing at home, which is why they are also looking to put in a behavioral psych referral to deal with some of the black and white cognitive, inflexible thinking issues that we have. That I feel like, again, very typical for toddlerisms, right, Very typical and normal for this age range. So sometimes when I'm talking to peers or friends or family, they're like, well, isn't that pretty normal? I'm like, yeah, it is. And that's what makes it all so hard to decipher. And you know, all that we can speak to is our experience and the extremes that we have at home, especially, um, especially in our family unit, and the frustrations that we have and, um, I don't know. I guess all I can say too is like you just got to know in your gut, like if, if something feels hard and off and and wrong and beyond your capacity to control chances are like it's legitimate and may be something more than just the norm. You know what I mean and that's what that's been our experience with Grant and obviously he loves fiercely, he lives life fiercely and unfortunately probably takes after me quite a bit. Um, even though I didn't have speech, um, or potty training issues as a kid, um, I can see his zest for life and it's, frankly, it's a beautiful thing, um, and probably why I? I know that I want to protect him, that that mama bear in me for sure.

Speaker 1: 15:05

Um, but yeah, this this week was, was a hard one. It just felt like you know, from having his IEP meeting to ending speech. But I didn't share this yet, having probably one of the worst speech sessions we've had to date. Ironically, speech sessions would go way worse than his OT sessions, but I feel like we had better success of speech translating at home versus OT and OT. My husband would take him to those sessions so I wouldn't be there.

Speaker 1: 15:38

So there's always the element of like is he playing into antagonizing with mom or leaning in with his attachment with me more? I think that's for sure an element in the room. But regardless, ot, like he would just walk in, no issues, no shyness, and just start playing. I mean it's all play therapy. I mean, frankly, speech is still play therapy too, but I think he can feel and sense the work that's verbally happening and he would just shut down.

Speaker 1: 16:09

And it was hard. I mean I feel for him. I know it's not an easy thing for him emotionally and you know it's a new environment, it's new people, you know, and it is a lot for him to take in have typically been very difficult for him and take a lot longer as compared to my daughter, as you know, and sometimes he surprises me, you know, surprises all of us, you know. But that's, yeah, that's just, that's just been his experience, that's been our experience. So, anyways, but yeah, he'll go into OT and he looks like he's having the time of his life. But yeah, he'll go into OT and he looks like he's having the time of his life and he's having so much fun, and I'll be like, okay, awesome, so I will go home and I'll get some like similar toys that they're doing at OT. I'm like, okay, let's see if we can keep practicing this at home, right, because it's once a week and he just digs his heels in.

Speaker 1: 17:07

He's my kid that like he's stubborn as a mule and when he doesn't want something he does not want something. I mean, grant lives by Grant's rules. Everything is based on his barometer for life and you can't make that kid do a damn thing, and that is for sure. There is, again, probably a wonderful side to that, but when you are a parent to a headstrong kid, that's all I have to say. So, anyways, yeah, we would try to do some of those play things and you just couldn't care less and I'm like you were loving it and being so wonderfully participative. And that's just where I think all kids probably have that element of being a wonderful people pleaser, probably at school, around their peers, maybe in this case with their therapist, not that he's, like, you know, being fake with them, right.

Speaker 1: 18:01

But then you know, he goes back to his home environment and he likes his own toys and his own stuff, and I get that. And I was saying to a friend I was like, well, maybe I should like not put away all of his old toys but maybe like almost simulate a little bit like ot and just put out the ot like stuff and see how that goes. But and then I was like, well, that could be helpful. But it's also like, to a degree, it's still our home, not that I'm saying not willing to to make that like accommodation for him to try to, you know, simulate that, simulate that and support that. But I think, do you think there's an element of like I still think he needs to find a way to be acclimated in his home and move about his home, um, so I think there's validity on both sides. You know what I mean. So anyways, um, but yeah, all this to say that our biggest struggle right now is potty training.

Speaker 1: 18:52

He is completely proficient in number one and not in number two. So while speech has ended, ot has been extended for another six more weeks to kind of help keep focusing on OT. Another six more weeks to kind of help keep focusing on OT. Again same thing Because he's struggling with number two. He again seems compliant while he's there in session and then anytime we try to translate, to do stuff at home, I'm telling you there is no amount of gentle parenting that seems to get through this kid and and that's just what makes it so difficult for my husband and I were like and this is where I think I as a parent feel like I feel just tapped out because I'm like I I don't know what else to do.

Speaker 1: 19:42

This is not my area of expertise. Sure, I have a master's degree in counseling psychology. It is not specific to this and I feel like it has definitely helped shape and give me a foundation to know just other general diagnoses and having great empathy for differences and being okay with that, but it doesn't make me feel any more equipped as a parent and knowing how to handle these things, you know. So I'm relying heavily on trying to get myself versed with these other professionals that know what they're doing. So, ironically, I actually had a call today with a pelvic floor specialist sorry, a pediatric pelvic floor specialist. Never heard of that before and it was interesting to get her take on it.

Speaker 1: 20:34

And, to be honest, I hung up the phone and I almost wanted to cry because she validated something in my soul that I didn't know that I needed to hear, but she mentioned she was like Claire, I work with kids and families like this every single day and I want you to know that you're not alone. And that's not the part that I'm saying that I needed to hear, because I kind of expected to hear that she was just saying that rewards and sticker charts for this type of issue don't seem to work at all and she was basically like you don't need to waste your time with that and because I've had so many friends and peers and family members you know suggest things like that, and I was like, guys, if it was as easy as that, I swear to you on God's green earth I would have done it and I did and I literally tried everything last year and, to be honest, it was so frustrating to the point that, like I know, like in our household, you know, we like wanted to get him potty trained before, you know, potty training me like number two before pre-K this past fall started and I was like, and I felt like I was trying everything and and again, you can't make this kid do anything, just like you can't make an adult do anything. You certainly can't make a toddler do anything. And shaming wasn't gonna work, time out wasn't gonna work, and. But when she mentioned, let you know, rewards, sticker charts and all that stuff you know doesn't work in this situation, to be honest, I just I really did feel like a massive sense of relief. I was like, okay, I've felt that all along, but I also felt like I was doing something wrong because we weren't making progress, and I felt frustrated as a parent and you know, I felt like maybe I had failed and messed up in some way, you know. So it's still a road that we are working to navigate and we are certainly not at the end of it.

Speaker 1: 22:44

You know, between OT, fine motor pelvic floor, pt and, frankly, even behavioral psych right, there's so much that's still kind of going on in our world and in our life. So I will be sure to keep giving you some updates on our parenting journey. Again, this is our experience. On our parenting journey. Again, this is our experience, and I feel like I threw a lot of detailed information at you in regards to the history and some of it I glossed over really quickly because I was like I could probably spend, you know, two hours talking to you in hyper detail about it. But think of this as more of my moment to vent and breathe. Maybe this plant here will help give me some air and some fresh life, frankly, some sleep.

Speaker 1: 23:35

But all of this to say is, if you are a parent of a neurodivergent kid or of any diagnoses or not, you know what I mean. I just want you to know that you're not alone. You know what I mean. I just want you to know that you're not alone. And, ironically, I still feel like I am in no way qualified to speak about this stuff other than I'm just out here sharing my experience. Because the reality is, I think us moms, everyday moms, we experience enough hardships in trying to be the best parent, mom, spouse, family member, friend that having these additional challenges that are often unseen to the naked eye when your kid maybe, looks like seemingly normal. You know what I mean. I almost like hate that word, but you know it's a funky thing, it's a wild ride to be on.

Speaker 1: 24:31

But if you ever want to chat further or if you're ever going through anything similar, please know that I'm here. Again, I am not an expert whatsoever. Please always refer to your own pediatrician or therapist or supports in your life. But if this resonated with you, feel free to send me a DM, post a comment below, share this with a friend and I hope to talk to you soon. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Mom Talk, maryland. If you loved it, leave a review, share it with a friend or tag me at thecolumbiamom on Instagram. I'd love to hear what you think and don't forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode. Until next time, keep showing up, keep supporting local and keep being the incredible mom, woman, human that you are.