I've been reading "Toxic childhood" and one thing concerns me.

[mummyloveslucy]

Hi, I'm reading the book Toxic childhood at the moment after finnishing Detoxing childhood. I'm finding it so interesting and insightfull.
I'm realising the more I read the book that we as a family are giving our daughter the best start in life, everything it sugests as being the most important things a child needs to reach their potential, we've been doing naturally since her birth. We talk with her all the time, give her undevided positive attention, she spends a lot of time out doors charging around in the fresh air. She eats well, sleeps well and is genrally turning in to an extreamly loving, caring and out going little girl.
The one thing that's worrying me slightly is that she has quite a severe speech disorder and throughout the book it says how poor speech is mainly caused by toxic childhood syndrome, and teachers are seing it more and more. It gives suggestions of how to overcome this, such as talking and listening, singing, reading, etc.
We've been doing all of this since she was born, far more than any other parents I know. My daughter loves music and can remember whole songs off by heart, we also love books and traditional story telling. She also makes up stories for us and puts in loads of expression, different voices for different charictors and always finnishes with a bow.
She has a genuine desire to communicate and a love of language but something is holding her back.
She's due to start primary school in January 2010, and I don't want the teachers to think that we somehow caused her problem. I spoke to her speech therapist about this and she said that our daughter gets more support from her family than any other child she see's which was nice, but I'm just a bit concerned that her new teacher won't realise how dedicated we are, or how eager our daughter is to learn.
I don't want my daughter to be held back by her speech, and I'd like the school to know that we will support our daughter and the school 100% with out sounding like a pushy parent, which couldn't be further from the truth.

The rest of the book is good, it's just that one point. When it say's "You owe it to your child to make sure they can communicate well", I felt like shouting at her "What more can I do??".
There are a lot of good points in the book, and I know she didn't mean children with neurological disorders. It's just that when you're trying so hard to help your child, and you read about all the problems poor speech can cause, it's just really disheartening.
I'm glad the teachers will be understanding though.

I wouldn't be overly concerned about your dd's reluctance to say what she has done at nursery. My ds is the same and always has been. He is articulate beyond his years (4) but I never have a clue what he has done with his day and I think that is normal for some children. Apparently he can't even remember what he has had for lunch let alone what he has done in class. My ds was a prem and I went through a phase of reading those sort of books. All it did was make me think I was being a crap parent so gave them up to preserve my self esteem. It is better to be guided by the professionals you see rather than some random stranger spouting so called wisdom in a book.

Don't take any notice of the book.Some severe speech disorders may be caused by the toxic child syndrom but that is not the main cause. Your childs teacher will know this.

According to DS, he's done "nothing" in his entire 2 years in school and his 3 years in nursery prior to that - he's 6 now and has been in nursery since before he was 2; I'm convinced he's not done "nothing"

I wouldn't take that answer from a 4 yr old as a major issue, really MLL

What does the SALT say about her language decline?

The SALT has now said that Lucy's not able to hear the differences in her speech and needs to do more work on listening. The consultant wants to see her again to check her development. The SALT has given a diognosis of verbal dyspraxia. She also has some general co ordination difficulties.
The nursery wants us to check her hearing again too.
What ever it is we'll get to the bottom of it. I'm glad it's being sorted out before she starts school. That way the teachers will know what's going on from the beginning and systems can be put in place to help her.