does speech therapy work?

[MistressMiggins]

I am so anxious....DS is in first yr of school - will be 5 in April.
Been seeing SALT on off for 1.5 yrs and we went 2 weeks ago after break of 8 weeks....

SALT listened to DS's chat & said to me "oh its firmly engrained in his brain"

we are now going to have fornightly sessions with her PLUS someone is going to go into school DAILY to work with DS.

hes so bright - his actual vocab is huge BUT just cant say a lot of the sounds

what can I do to help?
will they cure/help him?

our dd1 is having regular speech therapy - with a few gaps along the way.

We are doing very concrete activities with her to start her practising her sounds.... each week she has a couple of sounds to work on.

eg. For b - there is a picture of a number of bouncing balls and as dd1 points to each she says the "b" sound iyswim. She has a picture of the countryside with a road going through it - she has a little car that she pushes along the road - practice her "mmmmmmmmmm" sound.

Then throughout the day - if we are in the car or something I will try and get her to practice her sounds - see other cars, see a ball etc......

I have found that more helpful even for me to direct her and know how to help her rather than some of the wishy washy - whole word activities I have been given.

The other thing the speech therapist said - is lot s of modelling - phrases, sentences, sounds and the salt assures me it is valuable and will help dd1.

I think its the helplessness.
I have been given exercises to try and he tries so hard but he really thinks he's saying it correctly.
What concerns me more is that the SALT has almost said lets go back to easier sounds & not so many...and the fact she sounded so surprised by his lack of progress.

At least seeing a SALT has stopped people saying he's lazy and just not trying as has been said to me by one person & probably thought by more...

Dd2 is 5.3 and has been seeing a SALT for 2 years but only gets 3 a year her speech has come on a lot (prob more due to hearing probs improving rather than the SALT)but she is still unclear.At parents evening the teacher admitted she only understands her 50% of the time

Don't suppose it is hearing as well?If he thinks he is saying things right but isn't maybe he doesn't hear it right?

that is right - dd1 had fluctuating hearing due to glue ear and fluid build up. Earlier in the year she had grommets put in along with tonsils and adenoids out( stopped fluid build up) and the difference in her hearing was amazing. I think that made a big difference to her speech and her sounds became so much clearer.

Was going to ask if there was an underlying hearing problem? As I have a cousin who had this problem.

From the other side of things I also knew an adult who went through years of ST as a very young child and when I met him he was actually a teacher of secondary school children with no communication problems at all!

well funnily enough someties I do wonder if he cant hear very well but put it down to being distracted
we do have a drop-in hearing test so I might try that just in case

I am lucky that he is going to get daily help in the new year in school but he just doesnt seem to ahve made any progress in the last year