My son has Expressive and Receptive Language delay. This means he has difficulty understanding what is said to him, and he has difficulty saying what is on his mind. He has had speech therapy since he was 2. He has now improved a lot on the expressive part. He still has difficulty constructing sentences so you usually just pick out the key words to be able to understand him. Now, in terms of what is being said to him, you still have to speak clearly and in short sentences. We are a bilingual family. In preschool, this did not really matter to his speech therapist. However, in TK, Kinder, and now first grade, they are attributing his language delay to his bilingualism (without referring to it outright, of course). Our school district has a very high population of English learners. Somewhere along the way, teachers and aides who are not SLPs have simply assumed as he gets older, he will learn to speak and understand English. His special education teacher in TK knew this from personally handling his IEP document, but still put him in ELD with other English learners. His gen ed teacher now in first grade, even said to me that my son does not “look” autistic and that he’s doing very well in class. My son is “high functioning” although I do not like using that term. He has ASD and language delays but I think he has high IQ since his gen ed teacher in Kinder said he was one of her students at the top of the class. In TK, he had high grades too at the end of the school year. So now basically, “impedes learning of self and others” is hard for me to contest since he gets high grades. Then, gen ed teachers just assume (without saying it out loud), he is bilingual so he is a little slow in speaking and understanding English. I am still reading and researching on how best to help my son during annual IEP meetings. Language delay is something that you cannot out grow. He will be in speech therapy even as he gets older. Now it is affecting his reading comprehension too. He is excellent in Math. And he is on the opposite end when it comes to Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing.