To expect our SALT to do her job and help our daughter ??

[mummyloveslucy]

My 3.5 year old daughter is having speech therapy at the moment. She is ment to have it once a week but is often given long breaks of up to 2 months for it to "sink in". Then recently the SALT has been saying I can't fit her in next week etc. I keep asking her to talk to the nursery to give them some advice as to how to help her. She say's "I'll ring them today" but she dosn't. It's driving me mad! She just seems sooo laid back. She is newly qualified so I would have thought she'd have a bit more get up and go.
Anyway, I'd love her to have private speech therapy but we just can't afford it. It is extreemly expensive. I've even looked in to becoming a speech therapist in order to help her and other children and famillies in the same position as us. I was amazed to find out that they don't earn all that much. When they charge a minimum of £50 an hour for private therapy. I think it is wrong that they should profit so much from a childs misfortune. It makes it impossible for some families to get the help for their children. Anyway I feel that she needs a proper diagnosis in order for me to get her more help. The SALT has mentioned verbal dyspraxia and after loads of research I have no doubt that is what she has. If I can't get her to make a simple phone call, how can I get her to make a diagnosis? My daughter is making very little progress without the therapy and is becoming increasingly frustrated. The nursery are doing all they can to help, one to ones every day etc. We are of corse doing all we can but just feel soo let down by the speech therapist. Does anyone know how I could get more help for our little girl, or how to "wake up her SALT" ??
Thanks.

My son had a bit of sporadic/intermittent SALT between the ages of 3 and 5, but he didn't really click with the therapists, and made very little progress.

At the age of 5 he couldn't make the following sounds (at all) k, g, sh, s, z, p, m, l, r, ... gosh, loads. I can't remember it was so long ago.

He could say b, d, and n ... I'm not sure about anything else.

As you can imagine it was very difficult to understand him. To complicate matters further he had a very wide vocab and spoke in long, complex sentences, which made it even harder.

When we moved here (5+2 months) he started having weekly SALT and his therapist was fab. He was at just the right stage to co-operate and persevere. As well as the SALT sessions we religiously practised the exercises twice a day for at least 10 mins. Within a term he was able to say almost all of the missing sounds and was easily understood by everybody.

Wow! That is fantastic to hear. That sounds very much like my daughter too. That has given me hope. She does very well at her therapy sessions. She has a very long attention span and really works hard. She's just not given enough. I know with the right help she will do well, I don't feel she's being given that chance though.

Do you get given exercises to practise during the week in between sessions?

We have a piece of video of us having a meal when ds1 is about 3 yrs old, and it's astonishing. Ds1 burbles out these long sentences and when we listen to it now we have no idea what he is saying. But the us on the film clearly understood him completely! Things like "You need to say thank you to me mummy, because I helped to cook the pasta."

Which roughly translated sounds something like "Doo dee doo day da-doo do mee mummmy be-duh ...!"

Interestingly what helped ds1 was learning phonics. His nursery said that because of his speech he wouldn't be able to learn phonics, but I knew they were wrong. He understood the differences between the letters, he just couldn't work out how to make the sounds.

When he was 4 if we or others were struggling to understand him, he could use letter tiles to show us the first couple of sounds of a word, even though he couldn't make the sounds!

Hi Mummyloveslucy,
sorry, essay coming up....

so your DD's expressive language is good in that she has wide vocab, able to put together sentences, great understanding but her sounds make it difficult for others to understand her. Thus causing her much frustration. Her errors vary so it's difficult for you/others to predict what she is saying.

In my exp Makaton is typically used to support children with language needs, not difficulties isolated to speech. I wonder how functional it would be for her to use signs if not currently used at nursery.

I think it's great that you are honest with her when not understanding. The temptation can be to pretend you have understood. By showing her you don't lets her know that what she says is important to you.

I would try not to ask her to correct herself (you probably aren't anyway)- rather give her a clear model once you understand her by repeating back 'difficult words.' e.g. she says, 'it's a buttai' you say, 'thats right a butterfly.'

acknowledge her frustration, e.g. 'i can see you are getting cross,' or 'I'm sorry I didn't understand. Let me listen again.' you are doing the right thing by asking her to show etc. Althought it's difficult to see her experience this pain it may help her to gain insight into her difficulty and provide motivation to develop her skills.

sonetimes at this age children do have insights into their own diffs e.g. 'I can't say it...' sometimes they don't and think that others don't understand because they are not good listeners!

Keep up the praise in general.

A really good system that your SLT (when you finally pin her down) might think about introducing is cued articulation- a series of signs for each target speech sound. You DD might really enjoy and 'get' the visual nature of this and will help you/ others at least recognise the initial sound of target words.

When talking to your SLT's manager please mention that DD's errors are inconsistant and it's affecting her behaviour. Tell them just how very anxious you are. Get them to send you a letter of reply to summarise the telephone conversation and to state what they are going to offer. You are intitaled for your DD to be assessed by a different SLT (for 2nd opinion of need) this would be done by a senior. I would ask for this.

sorry for long postx

Thank you Mamabea- I will definatly ask for a propper diagnosis and if needed an assessment from a more superior SALT. She get a homework sheet but it's always far too easy. She gets the idea within a few minutes, then that's it for another week (at best!). I have bought her jolly phonics songs CD for the car which she loves. She is making great attempts to say the sounds too which is great.
I will ask her about the macaton too. Anything that helps her frustrashion has got to be worth a try.

It is hard somtimes not to laugh at some of her speech sound errors especially when she said "oh yook Daddy's small cock" She was talking about his wrist watch. It did sound funny.

Hi MLL, just checking in to see how you got on today with the salt. Hope it all went okay and that you managed to get your point across.

Hi MLL, just checking in to see how you got on today with the salt. Hope it all went okay and that you managed to get your point across.

Hi, I've just picked up this thread looking for speech therapists specialising in verbal Dyspraxia. How are you getting on? My daughter was diagnosed with severe verbal dyspraxia at 3 yrs old. She was completely unable to talk & so we had to sign with her whilst she underwent intensive speech therapy. I used Signalong as this was the signing system that the LEA used. She was placed in a pre-school language unit 2 mornings a week. However, she needed speech therapy 3 times a day 7 days a week so in between the language unit days I did the rest. The advantage of signing with a child with verbal dyspraxia is that it takes the pressure off them to talk whilst their sound system is developing.

Hi,
Just seen this and you're probably already there, but if not - you should consider getting a referral to the nuffield

www.ndp3.org/dyspraxia-referral-guidelines.html

I think they then train your local therapist on doing the nuffield program with your child.

If it is verbal dyspraxia let me know as I've been doing lots of research on it because my little boy has it!

• Hayley