Advice needed re speech therapy for 4 year old

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DS is 4 and recently started primary education (independent school). The teacher has mentioned that she is struggling to understand him sometimes.

We had DS assessed by the local speech therapy team about 12 months ago and they thought that he had some difficulties with his 's' sounds but that it is common at that age.

We advised teacher of this and we agreed that it was something to keep an eye on. However, we're concerned that we should be doing something about this and pay for private speech tuition (DS has since been discharged by the NHS speech therapy team and it can take 6 - 12 months to get a new appointment).

Any views?

My 4 year old Ds was assessed as having a delay with S and K sounds; we were told these are normally clearly pronounced by 3.5. We were given some simple exercises to do at home, but they were ones I had found on the Internet myself already, and they have made a massive difference in the clarity of his speech very quickly. The general advice we were given was that it was not a huge issue though.

Perhaps if speech and language assessed him a year ago, it would be worth contacting them again as he is now a year older? Maybe ask the teacher if it is improving in her opinion, or if there are any sounds in particular she feels are not clear, then you can pass that on to Speech and Language.

The difficulty is the time it takes to get an appointment. We waited about 8 months last time and he's now been discharged. Estimated wait time is over 6 months so we're concerned that we're losing valuable time and should go private,

Hi, my ds is 4 (5 in Jan) and we had parents evening 2 weeks ago where teacher said the same - struggling to understand him sometimes and she suggested speech therapy. We are at private school too.
Ds struggles with saying 'sh'. R comes out as w, and can't say th - comes out as v.
We phoned up a speech therapist on the Friday (private therapist recommended by school), had assessment on the following monday and first proper session yesterday. The therapist said ds a bit behind on speech but will easily be remedied and we will have weekly sessions going forward.

The only thing is it is not cheap. The assessment was about £200 and the sessions going forward could be about £75 each. However if it improves his speech it will be worth it. Also I have been given lots of work to do at home with him.

We have gone private with DS2 who is 3.7 and has difficulty with his s and f sounds.

30 min sessions in London are 45 pounds and I think the initial assessment was 90 pounds.

In half a term he has made huge progress and I think after a few more sessions he will be done.

In addition to the 30 min session, we get weekly exercises which his pre school teacher does with him.

Definately money well spent in my view.

Get a recommendation from school. But ideally you should go for someone local so the travel to and from the sessions is not too much of a burden.

DS1 started his speech therapy at 4 - he had a referral on the NHS which was taking forever so got a private speech therapist (75 pounds per session). He couldnt make t,j,d sounds, difficulty with sh, ch,st etc. It took a long time of weekly sessions and exercises we did at home to see any real progress - about 6 months - by which time he'd finally been seen on the NHS who agreed he needed therapy (but they only offered a block of 4 sessions for 4 weeks then nothing for 3 months then the same again) so we carried on with both NHS and private therapy (which moved to fortnightly and is now monthly). He's now 5 and 3/4 and his speech has improved hugely - I think it has been money extremely well spent.

Depends how much you would suffer financially by doing it. For a single sound problem I wouldn't at this age, personally, though I might re-refer to the NHS team while expecting that by the time the appointment came up, the problem might well be resolving on its own.

Cwtchy can I ask for the link showing the exercises you found on the internet? Thanks.

We went to a private speech therapist finally with DS,after a long time of the NHS speech therapist telling us he was a little behind but would get there.(he had work to do to help him with the s sounds but that was it)
That was fine as far as it went,but he was really hard to understand,even for us at home.He was 7 by then.
The private therapist was brilliant - she could even get a tired and hyperactive DS through a productive session after a long day at school and a long drive to her home.He couldn't say c or g,replacing them with t and d,and she got him using those sounds in a couple of weeks,though it took longer for him to use them automatically.I knew what he needed to do but had no idea how to help him do it.
It was expensive and time consuming,but it was well worth it to see Ds being understood without the need for constant repetition and questions.
Having experienced referral for physiotherapy and occupational therapy assessments for DD as well,my advice would be if you can afford to see someone privately then do so,as it can be so slow otherwise,and 6-8 months is a big chunk of time when you are little - an 8 month wait from now will take you into the summer holidays next year...
If you are overreacting the worst that will happen is that you will have a few unnecessary appointments and end up a bit poorer,if your Dc turns out to have a minor problem it will be quickly rectified,and if they have a more serious difficulties the sooner you start the better.

The link is www.speech-language-therapy.com/txresources.html. If you scroll down the page you will see several links to pages for words with the /s/ sound at the start, middle and end of words. These were given to me by our therapist, along with a snake drawn on a post it note. The snake represents the sssss sound.

I cut the pictures out, and then placed one on a table next to the snake. so for example for the word "sun", I would point to the snake, and then to the picture of the sun. We started with the pictures far apart from each other, and slowly brought them closer until DS was saying the word correctly.

I hope that makes sense! We were at the starting point of only a mild problem, and DS could already make the sounds in isolation, so maybe different to your situation. I had considered going private, but these exercises had such a quick effect I'm glad I saved the money.

Thanks - we have organised an assessment by an independent speech therapist and will take it from there.

Thanks cwtchy, I'll give it a go.