My son (an 08-er as well, born in January) has a severe global language delay and we have been seeing a speechie since Sept. As much as it broke my heart to admit that he wasnt "socially normal" its been an amazing turnaround for him! We did not need a referral to see a private speech pathologist but we do pay for everything ourselves. Apparently public system can see you waiting years for a place in therapy and we just did not feel we could wait that long. You could probably get an assessment done by a speechie here and take it with you to the US.

If there are other issues (we have them with our Ds too) then a paed referral is the starting point and they help you figure out where to go from there.

Your doing the right thing, even if it means having to crawl out of the land of denial. It hurts but it truly does make a huge difference!