To find speech therapy useless?

[Tulipgold898]

My 2 year old is speech delayed. We are seeing a private speech therapist regularly and honestly don’t find it very useful. It’s all common sense stuff that I’m already doing having researched it quite a lot myself. Unfortunately all speech therapists have long waiting lists so can’t even change to another and see if it’s any different. Wondering if it’s just me or did people feel that there is really some value add with speech therapy?

My 4 year old got speech therapy for his pronunciation of c,t and a few other letters.

He attended for a couple of months. We got games to play at home. He now speaks perfectly and it worked almost immediately.

It definitely helped us.

Dd had private speech therapy during to the complete lack of provision on NHS here. It was life changing for her. At the start she had a bad stammer and was missing many many sounds. It was hard work, repetitive but by the end of reception she was speaking intelligbly and now you could not tell at all.

The thing is, there’s no magic wand that a Speech Therapist can wave to make it all OK. At 2, a lot of it is just common sense to parents who have natural ability or are able to research how to help but a lot of parents are not able to and need to be taught strategies explicitly.

@LadyCatStark

The thing is, there’s no magic wand that a Speech Therapist can wave to make it all OK. At 2, a lot of it is just common sense to parents who have natural ability or are able to research how to help but a lot of parents are not able to and need to be taught strategies explicitly.

Completely agree.

It seems like there’s been some success for older children with other issues. Haven’t seen much about younger toddlers with speech delays. Not really expecting results overnight but I just feel like the advice I’m being given so far is stuff I know already so it’s not really worth the couple of hundred I’m spending

My nearly 5 year old has a severe speech disorder, so not the same as a delay. It's a long and slow process but we do see progress through her speech sessions, and the homework we do and don't do often enough. I can imagine that for a delay where you are very on it as a parent it may well be a bit of a waste of money.

My son had severe speech sound disorder. We had some private SALT while we did the groups sessions on NHS (both were almost useless). Then we got one to one therapy on NHS which was brilliant. It took weekly sessions for 3 years but she really wanted to help him and us. She really cared. You need to find the right person.

I found SMALL TALK by Nicola Lathey a really helpful book and I taught him sounds at home with Jolly Phonics cards and songs. We had to do a lot of work together at home and it took years.

@Tulipgold898

It seems like there’s been some success for older children with other issues. Haven’t seen much about younger toddlers with speech delays. Not really expecting results overnight but I just feel like the advice I’m being given so far is stuff I know already so it’s not really worth the couple of hundred I’m spending

Agree...

Spend the money on horse riding therapy or other holistic approach

What communication are you and dc using?
Makaton?
PECs?
Symbols?
Aac?
Is it just a,speech delay or other areas of development too?

From the other side, as an SLT, we see the same as the general spread in experiences here. Some children make great progress and others don't with the same input.
With children and especially the youngsters, you work with a developing brain and sometimes it's just not the right time for the child to get that speech sound or make the next leap in development, and no amount of 'therapy' will get you there at that time.
When this happens we usually have to give some general advice in the vein of "keep doing these things until you see X change in your child and then contact us again (if still needed)".
It is definitely all about training parents to become skilled up. You'd be surprised though how many parents (and sadly nursery staff) will tell you "oh yes yes I'm doing all the strategies" while then going on to do a lot of not helpful things - people aren't always aware of their own interaction style. I've had long conversations about things like avoiding "testing" questions like "what's that/what colour is it/what are you doing" as they don't help to teach vocabulary and can feel pressuring, and to instead say what you see so "That's a helicopter!/Ooh a red bus!/I see you're doing some colouring in!" and waiting for the child to either just take the words in, or choose to respond, and the adult then launching straight into a string of just these type of questions with no awareness. It's crazy!
Early language strategies are common sense (as they should be!) but I wonder if you might have heard the advice and feel you can take the show on the road yourself for now! If so, just say!
And I just want to add that making families wait is really frustrating for us too and it's not the way we want things to work :(

@FloconDeNeige can I ask what kind if therapy was used for your 5 year olds stammer?

We have just started speech therapy for my 4 year olds stammer and are doing palin pci.

I'm trying to keep an open mind but i don't have high hopes for it improving using this method and I am so so anxious about it.

My youngest son had NHS speech therapy from the age of 3 to 5 and it was brilliant. I was already doing all the common sense stuff, my older children were fine, but my youngest needed help. The therapy worked wonders and helped him so much.

My two have both had excellent support from SALT, starting age 4 and 6, my DD is 10 and still under the SALT team. I think it depends on the issue but I wouldn’t be paying for privately SLT at 2, unless it was supporting alternative communication methods. I would happily pay privately for support my DD here now.

We had one when my DS lost speech for a while. We went over "slow speech" which we all did as a family and singing which helped.

Didnt find it any use here either op.
Dd2 went she was around 3. She was quite a late talker ( didn't have the 50 words at 2 they apparently are meant to have)

She did not get the shape coding thing at all. We tried fir weeks She didn't get it. One minute they said they were going to get cognition and learning in when they went to see her when she started school. Which I thought great because she didn't grasp anything that required remembering, like phonics fir example. Next thing I know I'm.getting a call to say they've signed her off. So having not responded to the therapy, having still not grasped shape coding and still reading by sight not by phonetic deciding,.they decided all was well

Fast forward to age 10 her memory has improved slightly for her to be able to recite times tables , however she she took 2 attempts to pass the phonics test. Her spelling akd handwriting is appalling. She frequently misses the sounds out of words when writing . She's always arguing with alexa because ut just doesn't understand her ( she's not clear enough)

I highly suspect she's dyslexic ajd she's having numerous interventions at school.

The teachers no longer hold out any hope for her spelling and writing realky though.

@Covidconfusion89

I don’t know exactly which method was used, sorry.

Why don’t you think it will work? I’m of the opinion that it’s best to keep an open mind, unless we’re talking about woo like homeopathy or reiki etc. I take it this method is not woo, if it’s used by the NHS?

One of my DC was under an NHS SLT for just over a year due to a stammer. She was about 3-4 I think, possibly 3.5-4.5. It was really helpful for her and I felt very supported.

@Covidconfusion89
I've seen great success with the Lidcombe Program for under 6yrs who stutter. Was in Australia but there's likely some SLTs this side of the world doing it too .

TBH I think that sometimes now there is a tendency to send kids who are rally just late developing to speech therapy. It doesn't help much because there s nothing really to do except wait.

Friend’s 11-12 year old has been attending speech therapy which stopped during the first lockdown. His mum said since he has been on tic toc his speech has improved ten fold.

Might not be what everyone wants their child to do, but she was quite surprised.

When my son was assessed by SALT around 4 and not speaking intelligibly at the start of school (summer baby) the person we had said she was dealing with children who had little or zero interaction outside family, not much within family. So my son gabbling but essentially having a crack at interacting wasn't seen as sufficiently seriously in need to continue sessions.

He got an ASD diagnosis at 12, I can see the trajectory of it all but SALT did bugger all for him at the time.

Is he just 24 months now?
What are the 4 or 5 words he says & how clear are they?
How many sessions have you had?
How much are you paying per session?

@Tulipgold898

I can see how it would be useful for articulation type issues. We are having it for a speech delay. At 2 he only has a very small handful of words. It may be that it just comes on its own at the right time for him but I also feel like I shouldn’t let the opportunity pass by to get some early intervention in case it’s helpful.

AIUI, articulatory refinements are often needed after a child with delayed speech starts speaking. Continuity of input could be really helpful.

Having a professional involved early, who can make recommendations to EY professionals and KS1 teachers, write reports and generally weigh in as needed could be invaluable later. Sometimes delayed speech is part of a wider syndrome. Early professional reports are even more valuable in that scenario.

Of course if you’ve put the mortgage into interest only to afford thrive weekly sessions, that’s different to an easily affordable weekly or fortnightly session, with your daily input. Affordability is a huge factor.

Two of mine have been in speech. The youngest is still in at 10, having started at two with no speech at all other than babbling. He was diagnosed with ASD at 3 and then a fluency disorder.

The early therapy was a lot of play and some of it seemed quite common sense--but the therapist was also able to work out that his receptive language was even lower than his original evaluation had suggested. It's impossible to say how much of his progress was due to the therapy and how much was due to development, but I felt it was helpful. We worked on alternate means of communication as well as speech. I also felt that even though I did a great deal of the work myself between sessions, the therapist was able to guide me and help me learn what to do, even though I did research on my own as well.

His therapy now is both focused on fluency and pragmatics/social skills.

I will say that in all my experience with therapists of various sorts, a great deal is down to the individual therapist. I have had a couple who were brilliant and a couple who were absolute duds. I thought occupational therapy was useless initially based on the first therapist we had.

@lljkk shoes, socks, milk, mama, dad, nomnom, all fairly clear he has some others that he’s made up eg calling grapes ‘paps’. Had four sessions so far at £90 each

@knitnerd90 Did you have any other indicators for ASD other than the language issues?

Hi OP, just checking from your last post what you're actually getting. So is the therapist aiming to equip you with strategies for going forward or is it a "SLT comes and teaches my child to talk" type situation?

Sorry if this next bit sounds a bit preachy, I can't seem to phrase it so it sounds right!
Just in response to some of the general questions thoughts in the thread. The intervention at this stage HAS TO be play based. Making your child "do therapy tasks" is completely meaningless for little ones.
As parent you spend the most time with your child and are therefore best placed to encourage their language. A therapist coming in once a week for an hour and doing the same activities is not going to make a difference. So that's why we work through parents.
Of course everybody understands that the basics of "talk to your child". However, the value in therapy should be in spending time with you discussing why certain interaction techniques are more helpful and some less so, and hopefully to spend some time with you to work out strategies that are especially helpful for the specific interaction style between you and your child, and looking for responses in your child that you had maybe missed then building on these.

As much as it's common sense a lot of the value is in having that second (trained) person to pick apart some of the specifics. If you feel the therapist is just telling you about strategies maybe you could suggest that it would be helpful for you to try them out in play with the SLT watching, commenting and modelling. Video based intervention can also be really helpful (albeit a bit cringey to watch yourself on the screen, I know!) and really can add to what you get out of sessions.
This is the idea with Palin PCI as well. Parents (actually any adult) often think they interact X way, but having them actually see what they do in interaction and observe themselves usually brings up lots of great ideas and teaching points. Palin PCI can be great for some and less useful for others but it's a nice and non-confrontational way to work on a stammer so one I often use as a first direct intervention.