worried about my neice

[constantworrier]

Hi,
I wondered if anybody could give my any advice
about my niece who will be 3 in January.

She has no speech apart from being able to say vowel sounds ' u-e' for mummy 'a-e' for daddy.

My sister is as you can imagine really distressed and feels guilty for not taking any action earlier. She had the chance to take her to some speech therapy at the age of two which she turned down as at that age my sister thought she would be ok and was just slow to develop in this area.

My niece was seen for her first appointment of speech therapy last week. My sister is beside herself as she has been diagnosed with a serious speech disorder-to do with children not being able to process or say consonants.

I have been trying to support my sister but I don't want to take over. My own daughter now aged 9 has a range of learning difficulties and attends a special school.
(Funnily enough her speech-apart from a few issues is o.k.) Do you think this could be genetically relevant?It has to be?

My sister has been told that her little girl will probably need to go to a special nursery
and her response is ' No way is she going on a special bus'(surely this is the least of her problems?).

Because of my own experiences I have urged her to seek the advice of a Developmental Pediatrician for a thorough assessment but my sisiter told me that The Speech Therapist
seemed very experienced and told her that there appeared to be no obvious problems.

Has anybody any experience of this speech sound disorder and how it can be benefited by threapy?
Would you recommend that she looks for private therapy or learns to sign because my niece is becoming so frustrated?

Thanks

My direct experience is of language delay rather than problems producing speech sounds - so hopefully someone more useful will be along soon!

I don't think that speech disorders are genetic, I would see it as being a coincidence that your DD has SN too. Has your sister been told whether there is a specialist language nursery in the area - possibly that is the sort of special nursery that they mean? If your niece's non verbal communication and understanding are fine, then I can see why SALT might say that a paediatrician appointment would not be absolutely necessary, but I would have thought it might be an idea for your niece to see a dev paed to rule in/out dyspraxia as other areas than speech sounds could be affected.

In terms of private therapy - depends what she is offered on NHS and how much confidence she has in the SALT. I think it would be a very good idea for your niece to learn to sign along side work on her speech.

I understand that these sort of problems can be helped a great deal with the right therapy, but it can be a very gradual and fairly lengthy process. There is a good book written by a mum to two kids with verbal dyspraxia called "The Parent's Guide to Speech and Language Problems" by Debbie Feit.

thanks Total chaos that's really helpful

Usually to get a place at a special nursery you have to see a paediatrician. I tried to get ds2 a place at an iCAN nursery but had to go via a paed and specialist SALT to access it. Other special nurseries are even more paed/child development centre based iyswim.

Your sister sounds a little in denial, so I would say just wait. There's not much you can do until she becomes more accepting.

TBH if your dd is at special school and your sister keeps coming out with 'no way is she going on a special bus' you would have to be some sort of saint not to lose your temper

Does your niece demonstrate good understanding/communication except for the speech sound production? DS2 had some speech sound production problem (and was at high risk of other problems because of ds1's severe autism) and we couldn't get near a special nursery!

Hi there jimjams- yes I was a little offended
but she is in denial big time you are right.

She is a very sunny natured little girlwho does communicate well using nonverbals and is also gregarious so don't think she is on autistic spectrum.

But when Im with her and ask her to pick out colours or say which car is the biggest?-she just looks at me and smiles.

It sounds like it needs a proper assessment tbh. But I'm not sure you can do much other than wait for your sister to come round to the idea. It'll either sort itself (she's still young so lets hope so) or the professionals will finally push her in that way.

When will she be seen again? When ds1 was 2 he was seen by a specialist SALT who uhmmed and ahhed about Hanen program or getting him on a waiting list for a paed. She decided to 'review' in 3 months. BUt 3 month appointments didn't exist and we had to wait almost a year, by which time it was obvious that there was lot more going on than 'mild language delay' (his initial diagnosis from the specialist SALT).

So it might be worth encouraging her to chase up follow ups to this initial SALT appointment, but I'm not sure you can do much else.

Hi, my dd2 (2.8) has no speech, we have been told she may have ASD or a speech disorder. We send her to a special nursery where she gets 1 on 1 help and extra help from a speech therapist. Dd has only been at nursery a few weeks and we have seen huge changes, she can now comunicate using pictures and is learning to sign, she is also making more sounds and trying to talk. We hope because she is getting this early help she will be able to go to MS school.

I was realy upset when we were told dd had to go to a special nursery and the thought of her having to go to a special school upsets me more, but i just want her to get the best help she can and by getting 1 on 1 she is getting alot more atention than she would in MS nursery.

If she can get her child into a special nursery it is a better way of getting her speech therapy, dd has speech therapy once a week instead of evry 10 weeks with SALT.

constant -being able to say which is the biggest sounds a bit on the advanced side for a 3 year old - IIRC one of the red flag questions for understanding at 3 is if a child is unable to indicate if an object is big or little. So they would be expected to know the concept but not to compare ifyswim? jimjams is right that whether understanding is OK is important. hopefully the SALT has tested that and found no problem........ of course your sister may have not got her head round all SALT has said if SALT did indicate a language problem with understanding.

the Ican nurseries that jimjams mentioned were what I had in mind when wondering if the special nursery was a specialist language nursery. These have salt on site, all staff would be trained to work with kids with speech language problems, I would have loved to get DS a place at one, I think it would be positive for a kid with a language problem to have this sort of intensive early intervention.

Marne - glad your DD is blossoming at her nursery.

Constant - what is the name of the disorder? People on this SN board have expertise in various specific problem areas.

Much sympathy to you and your sister. Do bear with her - I've accepted that DS2 needs speech therapy but would dread being told to go to a paediatrician....

I'm sure you're doing the right thing to resist "taking over". If I was the sister, I would be motivated by a positive vision of my daughter speaking fluently in the future - at which point no one need know how much help she had needed.

No technical ideas but if she is musical and gregarious then would the little girl like ballet lessons?

Interesting that she doesn't appear autistic. We went through years of speech therapy for my son, and kept being reassured that he couldn't have a serious problem as his social skills and other abilities were 'age appropriate' - yet I became convinced he wasn't understanding what we were saying.

It was only after several years, no improvement form SALT, and increasingly disturbed nights when he would wake up at 3 and not be able to go back to sleep, that we had an EEG and found he was having constant nonconvulsive epileptic activity during sleep. (Landau-Kleffner syndrome.)

Not wanting to scare you or anything, but I feel so sick when I think how an earlier EEG would have helped my son, and spared us a few years of anguish!

Thanks Everyone, that is so helpful. I really appreciate all your thoughts advice and suggestions as they have given me so much to think about. Thanks to all of you for your responses.