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should i see a speech therapist?

4 replies

horace · 07/06/2006 07:33

ds is 2.9 and lisps or misses out Ss at the beginning of words all together. Until recently I haven't been worried but a couple ofpeople have mentioned it to me recently. I have tried acouple of times to get him to say things correctly but it's not worked and i am worried I will stress him out and make things worse. I had just assumed it would go away on his own. Should I ask about a referal from HV or GP? should I even care. He does seem to dribble more than other kids his age but speech seems ok othr than that. PLease help

OP posts:
Piffle · 07/06/2006 07:51

My dd is under Speech Therapy (for speech delay)and is 3yrs 8 mths
She cannot say s at the beginning of words, she usues another process whichnthe ALT says is perfectly normal
She says at age 4 not being able to say s would be considered a delay.
HTH, if you think there are other issues with your ds's speech (dribbling lisp etc)then ask your HV for some guidelines
SLt appts are a long wait usually, so its worth putting a call in just to get on the list for an assessment.
There are couple of SLT's on mn, mizmiz for one, they might be able to popo along and give you some encouragement/reassurance

horace · 07/06/2006 08:08

Thanks for that, feeling a little bit more relieved already. ds is staring pre- school in Sept perhaps I will contact HV about a referal then - just to get on the waiting list. I was hoping there may be some tips out there that I could use to encourage him but part of me feels it would make an issue out of it. Child rearing is a constant dilema and there are no absolutes - so unlike my old life!.

OP posts:
blueshoes · 07/06/2006 09:15

Horace, dd's (2.8) speech is terribly unclear. Her speech only started to take off at a few months, which is late-ish. She misses out loads of consonants and her speech is mostly intelligible to her parents, far less to strangers.

But it is coming along steadily, with her speaking in whole 4-5 word sentences, grammatically correct, with right use of you and me and they etc. The HV said just to keep an eye at this stage. I could not be bothered to visit the drop-in SALT clinic because dd was clearly progressing at her own pace.

I didn't want to, like you say, stress dd out when she is already coming on leaps and bounds. Sometimes, I can see she looks at my lips when I am forming words, so during those times, I try to exaggerate them. Other than that, just lots of repetitive talking at her level, reading the same stories over and over, rhymes. She loves to anticipate words in the stories/rhymes, so maybe if your ds is similar, you could read books with more "s" words!!

Kaloo20 · 07/06/2006 13:28

Having just come out the other side of similar issues, I would recommend before doing anything get a full hearing test done. The two skills are very much interlinked and in our case, not being able to hear the sound was the cause of not being able to say the sound

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