SALT help?

[StarlightMcKenzie]

This is really a question for our SALTs but others may be able to help.

This is not about DS either, but DD.

She is only just 3 and her sounds are not too good although her actual vocab level is way above her peers, as are the complexity of her sentences.

But she has really trouble with pronunciation. You can understand her perfectly but she says 'clay' when she means 'play' and she says 'glue' for 'blue'. She also can't say her Rs for love nor money and she talks quite quietly.

I'm wondering whether I should envoke my 'middle-class right' to self-refer to SALT and use some of those middle-calss SALT hours for my dd now?

Also, do you think a hearing test referral would be sensible?

Or is what I describe perfectly normal? The trouble is, DS NEVER EVER had trouble with pronunciation, even with glue ear. His echoic skills and imitation skills are excellent so I'm a bit thrown by dd.

Interestingly, her nursery seem to think that she has more problems than ds, but I do disagree. Hers is a personality issue wheras ds is a disability. She stubbornly refuses to engage with anything and has zero compliance but is EXTREMELY emotionally manipulative and articulate.

She refuses to eat snack there fore example. She refuses to tell them why, but to me she will explain in perfect English - to quote 'Well, I don't eat snack at preschool because I've had my breakfast already and it is too soon to eat again and besides they only offer fruit, several types of fruit but still only fruit which does not have enough sugar in it, I would prefer biscuits!'

So would I get short thrift from a SALT? Or does something have to be looked at?

Can she say p and b or repeat the word correctly when you model it for her?

You can always self refer for piece of mind, I took ds2 who is also 3 for a self referral salt session last year, not because I had worries but because DS got dx and I wanted to exclude every possibility ds2 has potential issues. We were discharged the same hour and ds2 scored at 36 months for speech and language when he was only 2.

I couldn't say r until I was 7 I think and it corrected itself without salt input.

Ps lol at your dd about the reasoning as to why she doesn't like the snack :)

She can say 'bl' after 3 or 4 attempts and me insisting (but I don't much because I don't want to give her hang ups) but I have never got her to say 'pl' even though she tries really hard.

Good about the Rs. Perhaps they will sort themselves out. She is perfectly understood though.

There is an iPad app Tiga talk that I installed yesterday and was told by DS consultant, its game based and lots of fun. For eg child says bbbbbbbb and it pushes the boat across the other side of the lake.

Thank you for responding blueshark. Does the app work on an iphone?

Should do. It's the same technology

Thanks I'll try it if I can make it work.

Oh well, dunno why I'm asking really. I suppose I could just ABA her and then refer her if we get nowhere with targetted practice!

The subsitutions you've described are backing, which is an atypical process, often isolated to just certain sounds - is it just p and b, just word initially, just in clusters? How much does it impact upon her intelligibility - can people understand her etc? My little niece had some of this at 2.5 and it spontaneously resolved, in her case it was very much down to dummy use but sometimes it just happens. I worked with a little girl called Sophia once who called herself Kok-ee-a but she changed all f's, v's, p's, b's, s's and z's into k's and g's which was pretty damaging for her intelligibility. If it's just confined to p and b clusters and even more specifically pl and bl clusters, it may just resolve. R's NOT A CONCERN at all at this age, can develop normally up until age 8 or so.

Does she "hear" her error? If you said pass me the blue with glue/something blue in front of her, would she consistently only pass you the something blue? If you said let's go outside and clay would she notice your error? This is the first thing to target really.

If it is confined to these sounds in just this particular context (pl and bl), feel free to ABA it but start with error judgement and minimal pairs e.g. present target words and words with the errors she makes and get her choose the correct one. Start with simple words with one syllable only. If there are other sounds that are causing problems, she is using k/g in place of other sounds and/or in different places in words e.g. at the beginning, middle and end and/or there are intelligibility issues that make it difficult for people outside the family to understand her, get a full assessment. She is very young and speech errors tend to be highly remediable at the level you are talking about - anyone with a severe disorder at her age would be either completely unintelligible or practically nonverbal. So nothing really to worry about.

Thanks Working. That is really helpful. If I'm honest, I don't know what other errors she makes, if any. The poor love is so ignored in favour of her brother I only notice things when other people point them out.

She is very easy to understand, at least to me. But again, perhaps I should ask if others can understand her (although she doesn't talk too much to other adults except family).

She's never had a dummy and she doesn't suck her thumb. In fact she's never even had a bottle.

I'll try testing whether she hears my mistakes with the 'gl' and 'cl' and if we have trouble take her for a hearing test. Her brother has glue ear and recently had grommets and I had grommets as a child too so it is probably worth checking out.

And I'll hold off referring her until I have at least had a go at sorting it. I know enough about this process to understand that even with a referral I would be told either to 'wait and see' or given one or two exercises that I'll have to do with her anyway. I know you don't just hand your child over to other people to fix (wouldn't that be lovely?).