Speech therapy - 3yo

[longestlurkerever]

My dd2's nursery have suggested a referral for speech therapy. She's 3.4 and gets a lot of her consonants wrong - in particular d for g, t for c. She also misses out "am" in phrases like "I hungry", though they haven't specifically mentioned that. She otherwise has a wide vocabulary and long sentence structure. I think she can hear the different sounds because if I repeat back to her "a dod?" She'll say "No, a DOD!" and she can generally point to the right letter that something begins with. She is constantly snotty though and I have an appointment to see the Dr about that. I suppose my question is how worried do I need to be about her speech at this stage? There's a long wait for assessment by the NHS. Should I be considering the private route?

We went down the route of a private SALT and it made a huge difference. The wait for an nhs SAlT was too long. Some regions have regular drop in SALT sessions where you can chat to an expert about your concerns and see if they think a SALT referral is appropriate.

Seriously - get on the list as soon as you can. If her speech improves you can always get (or will be booted) off the list anyway when they come to assess her - and it might be the referral's not accepted with her current level of difficulties anyway.

DD2 could hear the sounds in words correctly, top group for phonics, one of the better readers in her class - even when she couldn't articulate them - she's got verbal dyspraxia, and generally slightly mangled up speech too. By the time we got a referral through and did our stint on the waiting list her articulation had improved so much we got bumped off as her understanding was good and she was vaguely intelligible - so we're having to pay privately as the structure of it is all over the place still.

Thanks. I'll definitely get on the NHS list. Still undecided about going private. Nursery says there's no need and it's more about getting on the list in case there's still a problem when her appointment comes round. Will make a decision after I've seen the gp I think. Interesting about your DD still being good at phonics and the verbal dyspraxia. Have recently been wondering if I have some form of undiagnosed dyspraxia. I've always been teased for my clumsiness and poor sense of direction and score really badly in spatial awareness sections of IQ tests. I don't speak that clearly either, people tell me. Haven't noticed any other signs with either DD though

Yes definitely get her on the list. I’d also be asking the GP to refer her for a hearing test, just to rule that out too.

My DD had a hearing test and SALT. I really wish I’d sorted it before school started.

I really regret that I got fobbed off by nursery (and health visitors as well - I've been flagging this up for years as a problem) that "oh she's improving - we don't think we need to do a referral" and it hit reception age with her speech intelligibility being as weak as it was. School were brilliant with her - probably too good as it tipped us over the threshold for NHS work.

We've still got problems with grammar and structure of her speech (gender pronouns are a lost cause in terms of he/she!) and it's immature - but she's now fully intelligible and a right bloody chatterbox.

To give you some idea of wait times - school did a referral late October - assessment appointment came end of January, and we had a session block for August but that only came through that early as we said we were happy to drive to the opposite side of the city to get into one of the extra clinics they put on during the summer holidays for everything around here to try to clear their backlogs. By that point things had improved so much in terms of her articulating the consonants she was missing that the NHS therapist sulked a bit about having to have her on the list and discharged us. When she started her nursery year she was barely verbal and you had the odd two word phrase "more juice" and the like which were very very unclear, by Reception you could probably understand about 50% of what she was saying as an outsider, and by the end of Reception you could understand about 99% and she'd rephrase something if it was clear you weren't getting what she was telling you - her vocabulary and understanding's always been good.

Thanks everyone. Are there things I can practise with her while I wait? Since nursery flagged it I've been paying more attention and some things still are unintelligible. We were playing I spy yesterday and "Key", "Tea" and "Tree" all sound exactly the same.