Cluttering

[elfycat]

My 11 yo DD2 had finally been assessed by SALT. She's an unclear chatterbox, and has been a selective mute when her confidence is low (a teacher in Y3 snapped at her and she didn't talk for 4 terms at school). Covid has got in the way of her assessment, but being at home took the pressure off, and she has grown in confidence.

On Friday morning I had never heard of cluttering. I'd gone both the school and private route as she starts secondary school in Sept and time is short, and both appointments came through. Both have said probable cluttering. We've had a CELF assessment done privately and she scored very well on language understanding and skills. The problem seems to be her ability to translate thoughts into coherent words.

I wonder if anyone else has experience of this. I have the feeling that I'm about to go through diagnosis process and possible battle to get a EHCP. It looks like a rare-ish (particularly in girls) language and fluency disorder which cannot be cured, only managed. She might have ADD/ADHD/ASD traits with this.

I'm looking at the positives. We're finding it early (often diagnosis is in adulthood), she has great vocab and language understanding even if that's not obvious to everyone., her secondary school scores highly at the progress-8 stuff, and I'm great at writing strongly-worded letters.

I know this is generally worked on by SALT stuttering specialists, and there's some overlap. Has anyone experience of this, or of what I might be able to have to deal with.

Hi, I don’t but am bumping for you

@PingPages

Hi, I don’t but am bumping for you

Thank you. It's OK if no-one had experience of this. The school SENCO is her teacher this year (and pushed for the referral as there was obviously 'something' going on with her, but we had no clue what) and has never come across cluttering. DD2 has been going for extra tuition for 18 months (using up DH's work childcare vouchers. We knew she was behind because of the selective mutism, and that was before Covid struck) and she's a SENCO at another school, and likewise had never heard of it.

She was asking if I knew what the next steps were or how they could help, and she's looked at the exact same info - there's very little and most of it is cut&paste from the same few SALT websites around the world. I said I think the main thing is not to inhibit DD2 and make her feel like she doesn't want to talk at all, until I get an actual plan.

I guess if this post stands, and slinks down the order in this chat, that's fine too. Maybe another time someone will scroll down and see that it's not just them in this boat. (If you do find this weeks/months down the line and you're in the same place PM me. I might take a few weeks off MN but I've been here for years and will come back to the thread - hopefully with more of a clue of what to do).

Hi op! My eldest had this. Her speech wasn’t great at around 5/6 years old -,wasn’t a stutter but sometimes quite unclear. Had the usual hearing tests & fine but saw a nhs speech therapist who said to ignore it and she’d grow out it. No one mentioned cluttering. So we ignored. Sometimes she was fine other times she was hard to understand. She never seemed aware of it until yr9 (age 13/14), when she raised it with me and asked if we could sort it. We saw a speech therapist privately who diagnosed cluttering and did around 10 sessions with her plus lots of practice at home. Her speech became perfect. Interestingly this speech therapist suggested she had something else going on too - turned out to be ADHD (but that took a while to be diagnosed). Forward five years and it’s crept back in again. whilst her speech is a lot better than it was she does mumble and clutter on occasion. Unfortunately it’s really affected her confidence in social situations too.
At the time I was a member of a cluttering group and would be sent newsletters - I’m pretty sure it was U.K. based but can’t be 100% certain.

Hi @ComplexNeeds

From my research it does seem that Cluttering is something that doesn't go away completely. Is more therapy an option for her? It's the social aspect of it all that had me most worried.

I spoke with a specialist speech therapist who has said that while DD2 transfers to high school the focus is on confidence, settling in, and building resilience (I checked that she's not using that last word as a buzz-word rather than actually working on her being able to face the world). Next step is an appointment between us and the SENCO (DD2's teacher this year).

They'll start speech therapy when she's ready. Her 'case' will remain open through her childhood and into adulthood and she can dip in and out of getting therapy as it's needed.

I said DD2 wants to be an engineer. Her father is an engineer. I was a theatre nurse - so as engineer-like as you get with the human body. Engineers diagnose the problem and then will find ways to fix it. Or find a work-around if things can't be fixed, and I suspected that DD2 will want to crack on with therapy.