Speech 'problems' in ds 4.5, any SALTs out there? Or anyone with any experience of similar!

[snooks]

Ds is 4.5 and was lateish to talk, but still within the realms of normality. He has caught up with his peers but there are still certain sounds which he cannot/will not say. I'm not sure whether he needs a SALT referral or not.... his preschool say that he is fine, but something niggles me....

For example, instead of train/truck/tricky, he will say chain/chuck/chicky.

Instead of cold/car it is told/tar.

Instead of snow/snake he says now/nake ie no 'sn' sound.

My HV also thinks he will catch up but I don't want him to get teased when he starts school in September or for things to not improve. I've noticed that even his friends from preschool (some are a year younger) will say to him "no ds, it's not xxx it's xxx".

Anyone got any advice please? Thank you.

could i just ask salt when th is sounded,and how signif it is if not sounded
eg thanks used to be hanks, is now fanks
also sorry for hijack
my ds is 7 and i can now teach and correct him myself ,but he has to learn which words are th not f and is also bilingual with welsh having a dd which is sounded th just to add to it

My DS1 said T for C and D for G for ages, certainly still at the end of FS2 so he was a bit over 5.

So "the tar went round the torner" etc.

SALT assessed him summer after FS2 and agreed there was an issue, not just general delay. We had some games to play etc tho tbh I am not convinced how much they helped...they were such a bore.

But in the end it clicked and he is fine. Sorry can't remember when but it was ages ago now (he is 9.5 now btw). AFAIK he never got teased; there is a lad in DS2's class with some speech issues and the other children are really supportive and even "translate" for him bless.

Just managed to come back to this thread (dd3 9 months has had a sickness bug all weekend).

I've had a good luck at you link on Phonological problems wornoutmummy, it appears (but don't want to selfdiagnose too much) that ds1 has a bit of a spread of the issues. For example, I've noticed over this weekend that he will say "fisscake" instead of "fishcake", "nothing" becomes "nossing", "the" is "da". Plus lots of other examples (especially fronting) which I won't bore you with!

All of this may or may not resolve itself over the next couple of years, if, as Sparky (SALT) said earlier, there are no underlying pathological/ physiological causes. So I think I will get a referral made as Sparky advised. I'm also going to get him checked by a very good GP at the practice; because ds2 has glue ear I'm maybe just paranoid, also ds1 snores like a grown man (don't know if there is any link with adenoids/ear problems??) He also says "huh?" a lot (he means pardon but is too lazy to say it) and I have to repeat myself.

Right, waffle over. Just trying to get my thoughts down before dd3 wakes up! Oh yes, interesting what you said about your ds Clary, I hope it's the same for us. Also really nice to hear about the non-teasing

just an update: we were referred to ENT by the gp - had an appt today (so quick, amazing). ds1 has glue ear - so now we know. he will have a hearing test in a week or so and then we will go down the grommets line and speech therapy too. hopefully will be sorted to some extent before school.

If it's any help, DD's speech was rather similar at same sort of age and sorted itself quite nicely after she started school, when they did specific work on phonics.

DS2 is quite bad, too, but he has started school already. It is almost a race now to see if school's IEP time sorts him out, anyway, before he FINALLY gets speech therapy on the NHS.

Thanks lljkk, that is encouraging to hear (about your dd i mean). What is school IEP time? (Is it something to do with phonics?) I'm not up on the school lingo yet

IEP=Individual Education Plan, basically (I think) it's an outline of what school will do for kids with special Educational needs. DS2 gets 5 minutes so many times a week, working with a TA and a "sounds" box. He works on saying the sounds for things correctly. He also confuses C and T a lot, btw. So he says "Tat" for Cat, etc.

It's hard to say in retrospect, but I think DD was just as bad as DS at same age. Lucky for her, she has October birthday so had matured much more by the time she started school. Being at the older end of the year She was that much more able to take on board phonics and really get her speech in order. I had been quite concerned that DD would be referred for speech therapy. If the usual literacy work on phonics hadn't clarified her speech then I think she would have been referred for sure.

Just now DS is crying, he has just fallen off a chair -- he does this kind of thing about 10x/day. I'm fairly convinced he's on the dyspraxic spectrum (verbal dyspraxia?), but we are waiting to see how he develops.

lljkk a lot of it is a waiting game isn't it, it's quite hard to actually know for sure if something is wrong 'enough' to jump in with help like speech therapy or not. I feel guilty because I think we just thought that his speech would sort itself out (and maybe it will?) and in hindsight I don't think we 'corrected' him enough - for example, today he has suddenly seemed able to say snow/snake instead of now/nake (no 'sn' sound previously). I think that's because we made it a bit of a game, doing a hissing sound and turning it into sssssnake.

DS has the t/c confusion too. Not sure how to work on that one.

I do remember googling verbal dyspraxia a couple of years ago when ds was hardly saying anything, but I can't remember the details now. Will have to go google again (but that will probably just give me something else to worry about).

Don't google (I know, it's too late for me to say that).
Dyspraxia is just a fancy way of saying "uncoordinated". I suppose it's been useful for me to note it because I suspect I have mild verbal dyspraxia; even so, I never had 'treatment' for it and I ended up doing well at school, so it can resolve itself adequately.

Don't feel bad. The only thing I would have done different (what I am doing now with the baby) is make lots of eye contact when speaking (hard when you have a large brood!). So that baby has better chance of seeing how my mouth makes the sounds. There was a whole thread on here about cute mis-spoken things you let your kids say... only I don't. I always correct toddlers, and they still say things wrong.

A speech therapist said that if you don't get referrals then the NHS never realises what true demand is (rather than NHS you could pay for private therapy with no waiting lists). So no harm in seeking a referral and maybe he'll never need it, anyway.

DS is 4y7m and does not get teased at school for his speech, btw, his teacher says that his peers just accept how he sounds and mostly understand him, even. One of his best mates is a girl in Yr2, so he's not getting teased by her peer group either. Most of your original list looked pretty normal to me, just the c/t thing got my attention. Double consonent sounds (like sn, I was told) they aren't expected to say properly until age 5.

DS used to say "na" for "the", for instance, but he is now getting closer to a consistent th sound.

The sssssnake thing sounds perfect.
t/c: I was told that C is made with tongue bottom of the mouth, T with tongue at top of mouth. SALT said DS should hold his tongue in right place for making each sound. I don't have that much cooperation out of DS, right now, but may work for you.

Wouldn't worry too much about being teased in school. I've found kids that age very accepting of difference. (DD is english mother tongue, in French school, with severe language delay / disorder in both langs so effectively mute at times... Other kids at school love her to bits!)
However, I'd say no harm in asking for salt referral if you can.

OK well I spoke to my HV yesterday and she has made a SALT referral for ds. Luckily dh has bupa through work so we have gone down the private route for the actual glue diagnosis/treatment, but the HV advised an NHS SALT referral.... actually not sure why... it was a difficult phone call because the dc were making lots of noise this end. I will look into private SALTS.

I didn't google verbal dyspraxia btw, somehow managed to stop myself! One thing at a time I thought. Pretty sure he is not dyspraxic though (she says without being fully aware what dyspraxia is).

Thanks to everyone for all the info on this thread btw, I feel lots better and more positive, not such a worrywart just hoping things will resolve. Really glad I started this thread a week ago.

Also really great to hear that kids this age don't tease (I always expect the worse and I shouldn't). Thanks again