We know that parents are important partners in supporting children. We uphold and support parents in early intervention, and once special education services start, the focus shifts to educational impact and supporting the child in academic spaces. Given the emphasis on the child’s performance in school in the Child Find process, many times parents may not be provided the opportunity to share their knowledge with the speech and language evaluator. For any multilingual evaluation, I highly recommend a change in evaluation practices!
Research has shown that caregiver input can help guide clinical decisions about whether a multilingual child has a communication disorder, especially by answering questions about the family history of speech/language difficulties and by describing their speech and language skills currently and over time (Restrepo, 1998; Li’el et al, 2018). In one of these studies, the parent questionnaire alone was the most predictive indicator of the presence of a developmental language disorder.
What information to gather and why?
- Parents and caregivers have crucial info about the child’s language acquisition history —> ask questions about the child’s language use and language input from birth until the present.
- Multilingual skills are dynamic and change over time, depending on multiple factors —> ask questions about what type of language input they receive at home.
- Language exposure & use is an important calculation to determine your eval measures —> ask about how they are using their home language and in what home/community contexts.
Resources:
Li’el, N., Williams, C. & Kane, R. (2018). Identifying developmental language disorder in bilingual children from diverse linguistic backgrounds. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.
Restrepo, M. A. (1998). Identifiers of predominantly Spanish-speaking children with language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41, 1398-1411.
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