Language Deteriorating at Primary School Age?

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I'm facing something strange with my son. His dx is HF-ASD. He's halfway to nine years old. Once his language developed he's become quite verbose and has always had precocious language. He has been more than fluent (beyond his years) for at least three years. Within the past two months or so, however, I am noticing some deterioration in his speech. He seems to be struggling with tenses in every other sentence he uses.

Oddly, this all started happening after he learnt to say "taught" and not "teached" about three months ago. Now even simple tenses are confused in his speech. I'm concerned and wondering if this is common or something I should take him to see someone about and/or how to address it. It's almost as though my correcting his "teached" has made him question all other tenses (because the timing is uncanny). I'm really confused and a little bit worried.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, especially if you have experienced this with your children.

I know that things like that...when one rule is changed or something, it will make me question the whole thing. I don't really know how to help it though. It is probably very frustrating for him, too.

Thanks for the response. I think you're on to something. I've also noted his spelling has become markedly better over the past few weeks, so I am wondering if it's sort of a balance process happening in his brain. I usually don't worry about this sort of thing, so I will leave it a bit and see if it sorts out. He's always had pragmatic language issues, but this is quite constant for him. On the upside he doesn't seem frustrated with it and I'm not making an issue of it with him. It's not just verb tenses but many other words. Today he confused "done" with "did" eg. "I'm not sure what it done." That's unusual for him and quite a few of the other confused words of late have been unusual.

Well, now that he knows about all those variants, it's no wonder he has to pause frequently to make sure whether any of the sentences he's producing have those variants.

It's not at all uncommon for us to slow down on one skill while we're mastering another. Just be patient with him--he's learning.

Yeah, I think you're right. Thanks for that. I just wanted to check amongst other folks to make sure it wasn't something I should be overly concerned with. I bet it is just a bit of brain overload due to all the new info!

We are experiencing the same thing with our 8yo. I think it may be an issue of overload. She is struggling with an overload of new math concepts this year in third grade. Her speech and spelling have taken, what I would describe as, a proportional downturn in relation to her math difficulties. The harder her teaching team struggle to keep her on grade level the worse it seems to be getting.

I'm not convinced it's a loss. They are keeping her on grade level so I'm going to wait it out until the summer and see if the release from the stress of learning has any effect. My suspicion is that her speech and spelling will return to her former level. She also has a learning disability in writing specifically and I just assumed that was what the connection was. Maybe it's not.

Thank you so much for this feedback draelynn. My son also has a writing disability (combined with dyslexia). I feel much more confident about letting things return naturally. I guess I was most worried that it might be a "sign" of something we needed to "catch." Knowing there are other kids in the same age range going through similar issues helps a lot.

Everyone may well be right. You know, it has been proven, to the shock of many, that kids, when exposed only to proper speech, learn to speak well! ******WITHOUT****** learning the rules! I STILL remember when a teacher told my class that the word to be was the most used verb! I thought "That IS ridiculous! I can't remember the last time I had to used the verb to BE!" I had NO idea that IS, ARE, WERE, WAS, AM, BE were the SAME verb! But I used them perfectly.

So that means TWO things! ONE, everyone above may be 100% right! TWO, it is possible that he is being exposed to a LOT of bad speech.

He's not being exposed to a lot of bad speech. I homeschool and I'm relatively certain I'm somewhat literate. We do hang out with other people, but they tend to be literate as well. It would explain it if I could find an external reason, though. I appreciate the feedback!

I'm dubious about the high stress placed on spelling and neat handwriting in general. In our modern world, both are nearly irrelevent. The skill we need to help them master is to collect their thoughts and translate them into words for others. Whether that method is through typing or speech recognition software, I think makes little difference. Most employers will make these small accomodations when necessary. Our challenge is teaching the grammar and structure and that's what my daughter's team is focusing on.

Oddly enough - in reading and writing, my daughter has trouble with the small words - a, the, what, at - but can read and phonetically spell three and four syllabyl words with relative ease. Still figuring that one out...

I agree with writing. I have extra pressure on me from the school district as I home educate. There's some irony in that, really. We have annual reviews and I have to prove my child is progressing without pressuring him. I don't believe in it. Most medical doctors I have seen write less legibly than my son does. I believe being able to spell is important, but I don't put a lot of pressure on him there, either. We're working in a program that teaches spelling naturally (and brilliantly). It's specific for dyslexic learners and he quite enjoys it. We do not drill or do testing in any way so the pressure or stress (if it is that) that is affecting his verbal skill is coming from elsewhere.

He probably thought "teach" was a fully regular verb, so finding out the past tense wasn't what he thought it was threw into doubt his beliefs about how regular verbs worked. That would mess up his use of most verbs until he realized that "teach" was actually a special case.


Articles like "a" and "the" carry very little informational content; you can usually understand someone pretty well by ignoring all the articles, and indeed some languages don't have them. Your daughter may be using the "ignore articles" technique, which would make the grammar rules that govern them difficult for her.

That is definitely true. We discuss how weird the English language is on a regular basis. It's sure not simple. I shudder to think how difficult it might be to learn it as a second language.

I had that problem but it much more severe and had to be corrected with speech therapy. I would say things like "I being gone" It being here" Being was my all purpose verb. I was taught english as a second language which it really helped to have someone teach me the rules of the language. I am now a poet and been one for 19 years and working on putting a book together.

Although in his case, I think the correction has made him question all verb agreements so maybe some speech therapy where the therapist can teach all the rules as english is a very confusing language for young aspies because there is an execption to every rule.
as most the time we put an "ed" after a past tense but changing the whole word as in "taught" probably threw him for a loop cause it did not fit the rules he previously learned, so teaching him all the rules would make him feel more confident in speaking as well.

My mother has been in the U.S. for more than half a century, and still has problems with the difference between "he" and "she".

I was born here 3 generations back and get he, she,me and we mixed up......I think that has alot to do with autism though