AIBU to think these are connected?

[ForRubyZebra]

My daughter is approaching her 4th birthday she struggles massively with her speech mainly sounds, she almost sounds like she’s deaf but she isn’t (been tested twice) it’s incredibly hard to understand what she is saying and in the end she will cry and say “just don’t talk to me” she’s been seen by HV Speech and language team who said because she could say 50 words it was fine even though you can’t understand them! She’s been rejected off speech and language list twice but nobody understands her!
I noticed at weekend she does not get dizzy at all she was spinning for 15 mins on a spinny thing you sit in and I was pushing till she couldn’t even control her neck and head was falling back and she could walk in a straight line afterwards.
could the two be connected like some kind of vestibular disorder I have no idea where to go from here as I have nowhere to go for help none of her friends understand her and neither do her teachers in nursery but she just keeps getting rejected from SaLT AIBU to think that the two could be connected ?

I don’t know but it does seem strange ! I hope someone with more ideas comes along soon

Thank you :)

I don't know enough about it to comment but I do know that we got great advice from a paediatric occupational therapist regarding our autistic grandson and sensory perception, including vestibular sense. I'm NOT suggesting your daughter is autistic but it might be an idea to contact your local authority SEN team to see if they have an occupational therapist who might see your daughter. I'm not sure if parents can refer, you might have to go through the nursery SEN worker (there should be one in every early years setting).

Glue Ear??

Speech Sounds very much like what one of my girls had (but no balance issues) it took an absolute shed ton of self delivered therapy and about 2 years to improve.....

We used self made picture books with literally hundreds of pictures of things she knew for letters and sounds and had her listening and repeating every night for two years... Hard and initially frustrating work, but 4 years later, worth every second.

If I’m being honest she does have some behaviours that would make me think she could be on the spectrum, she is almost terrified of different foods she only really eats broccoli, chicken curry, chicken nuggets and chips, she can have crazy melt downs but I usually put this down to people not understanding her. She will only wear dresses and refuses out right to wear anything else and generally struggles with her emotions. I will try and contact the HV again to see if they can help further as she goes regularly for help with food as she can’t be seen by a dietician as she eats food from each food group but is very self limiting. Thank you

We try so hard with her but it’s like you can bring a word down for instance grandad, gr-an-dad and she sounds a little more like it and you say it a bit quicker and she says “nana” she gets so frustrated and just says she’s done. I think maybe I need to put more effort into it too maybe I’m not doing enough with her.
im so worried she’s going to forever speak like this and it’s going to really affect her confidence when she first started nursery she couldn’t even ask to go to the toilet because nobody understood her so she just wet herself in the home corner it breaks my heart :(

Would this not have been picked up at her audiology appointments x

Did SALT give a reason for refusing the referral?

It does sound like a deafness issue so that's weird. Ive no advice n getting assessed and help but have you tried putting subtitles on when she's watching tv. My dc could read quite well by 4 due to subtitles and it helps with understanding the sounds in the words. It might just help whilst you're waiting for further help.

Good luck

Hmm I did think this but it sounded similar to my child, he could hear but had delayed speech and the words he did say came out a little like he was deaf, he would say the tone of the word but not definative letters/words, he would get so frustrated because I couldn't understand him. It was described that the way he heard words was like when you are under water. Anyway he had grommits put in and started speaking clearly within a few days!

Ds was slow to be able to make some letter sounds. We watched the alphablocks together over and over, making the phonic sounds when the letters came on screen. I asked him to look at my face sometimes, so he could watch how I formed the sounds. He enjoyed it, which was a bonus!

We had a really good speech therapist who did online assessments ... With our girl, we knew her hearing was OK and she could make the sounds, it was the wiring in the middle. It took a fair few hours of them playing and videoing and analysing the minutiae to get to the bottom of it I think we were very lucky to have a very switched on therapist with a interest in neuro linguistics.

The key was understanding that the trying and association was more important than the results, and not forcing her to get it right or say when it was wrong, we just pointed at the picture and said it, got her to 'repeat' it (right or wrong) then repeated it again ourself.... Like a form of reprogramming

So apparently and this is from the HV there are two routes to go down for a referral one is for children who do not talk at all and one is for children with stutters and stammers she is neither so they don’t believe there is an issue, but when I say you can’t understand her I really mean it if you know the context like colours you can kind of grasp it but if she comes out of school and she’s telling a big story you’ve no chance and that’s when she gets upset because you might say yes or no in the wrong place and she knows you don’t understand then