5 yr DD thumb sucking and speech concerns

[RibinaPet]

My Dd is just turning 5 and I've suddenly become aware of her speech problems.

She was a little slower than we thought she'd be in learning to talk, and when she did start she pronounced things in a babyish way.
Our childminder picked up in her speech when she was two, and when she turned three I took her for a speech therapy consultation. The appointment was fine and at the end the speech therapist looked at me perplexed and asked 'why have you brought her here?' As far as she saw there were no worries at all.

Now she's started school though I can see a massive difference between her and her friends.

Grammatically she has some problems : She never says 'the' or 'a' before words. She often misses out basic verbs like 'is'. Or says the wrong form of the verb 'that mean' instead of 'that means' for example

Pronunciation is a bit of a problem too. She misses of the beginning of almost every long word. 'Forgot' becomes 'got', 'pretend' becomes 'tend' etc

And because she sucks her thumb quite a lot, I think it may be pushing out her teeth and she can't articulate some words even when she tries.

The back story is she has been through quite a few ordeals in her little life. I struggled to leave an abusive relationship with her father for a long time, so she's had a horrible home life, plus lots of house moves. And now she's going through starting school with having to have overnights visits with him, which she really doesn't want to do, but we've got no choice.

I'm wondering what the best course of action is, should I go to the GP and back to speech therapy?

[TheHouseOnTheLane]

GP to get her hearing tested first of all and whilst you're there, ask the GP for a referral to see a speech and language specialist. x

In the meantime, make an appointment with her teacher and discuss what you've mentioned here. The teacher will share her or his own experiences of DD too.

[RibinaPet]

Thanks for that, I'll get on and do that next week.