Speech Therapy

[mummyinlaw]

My almost 4 year old has been referred for speech therapy after an initial assessment when I was told that her speech was very poor for her age. She is now on a waiting list for therapy which I was told she could be on for months. I am really worried, if she had been just a couple of weeks older she would have started school this September and she cannot say her own name or hold any real form of conversation. Yet she babbles (like a baby learning to talk?) away to herself all the time and it able to make plenty of noise! I'm sure they can't work miracles. Does anyone know what they actually do and how effective it is?

They play turn-taking games where first they learn to distinguish the sounds (and get a reward in the game each time they get it right), later they learn to produce the right sound for themselves (and get a reward for that).

I had a lot of homework to try to replicate the SALT at home; I sat in on most sessions so got a pretty good idea what to do.

A lot of what else happens depends on the nature of the speech problem; DS had a speech delay so he just couldn't make the right sounds, but his understanding of how speech worked was generally ok. Some kids have language disorders: they don't understand how the words should fit together. Some kids have both problems and more.

Was pretty effective for DS when he had SALT; he only had 12 sessions (aged 4-5) and made good progress so got signed off after that.

Hi, my DS was at speech therapy at a similar age, at age 3 he had no problems with pronunciation, but he had 100 single words and nothing else, and struggled to understand simple commands. 3 years on he is not fully caught up, but is much improved, speaking in fluent sentences. Speech therapy is helpful in establishing the nature and extent of the problem, and giving you specific advice on what to work on next to bring your child on a level.

as ragged says, a lot of the emphasis will be on them giving you guidance on what to do at home to improve her speech and communication skills. was the speech therapist happy about her understanding of language being age appropriate? I imagine you will be thinking about school applications; I would start talking to the school(s) you are thinking about sending her to about how they will support her if there are still speech/language problems when she starts next year. Hopefully she will have come on a lot by then, but best to prepare in case not.

feel free to post on the special needs board - a lot of us on there have kids who have had speech therapy, with language being either the main issue or part of another condition.

Thank you both for your help and for the point about school TC, I hadn't thought about that and am about to apply for her place. They were satisfied with her understanding but she couldn't say even one word on the assessment sheet correctly. I don't think we had realised how bad her speech actually was until the assessment. I will have a look over on the special needs section (I'm new to mumsnet so am just finding my way around!) I'm sure she'll enjoy the rewards and I feel a lot better now knowing what to expect and that they probably can work miracles after all!