Just cant get over how brilliant SALT has been, and still is, for DS.
He is 4.5yo and 5 months ago when he started speech therapy he was unable to pronounce pretty much any consonant except for 'd' and 'b' and substituted those for most other sounds. When he started I was translating things he was saying (I was the only person who could understand him entirely)for the SALT.
He has a newly qualified, very young and enthusiatic SALT. She must have photocopied me at least 50 A4 sheets of games and things to do at home between sessions to reinforce what they do.
She sees DS every week for a month, then a month break then every week for a month etc. She spent the first month of sessions doing assessments and working on getting DS to 'listen' better and hear the difference in her saying different sounds.
In the second month of sessions he worked on the 'f' sound. Within 4 weeks he went from not being able to say 'ffffff' at all, to being able to say the sound, the say it on the end of a word (eg cough - or 'doff' as DS would say ), then say it at the end of a word within a whole sentence. Then he learnt to say it at the front of a word, with a lot of practice and a big gap between sounds like 'f......ox' and in the last week he has just learnt how to blend the word together and say something like 'fox' at normal speed!
He has started saying the 'f' sound at the ends of words in his normal every day speech now and is almost at the same point with 'f' at the beginning of words too. Its amazing to hear.
Have just started work on 's' 'v' and 'sh' (double consonant!!!) and he is racing through the process even quicker than he did with 'f'!!
Its amazing how far he has come on in 5 months.
He did a drawing at pre school yesterday of an octopus on a skateboard and his teacher told me what it was and said 'and I understood first time when DS told me what he had drawn!' she and he were both v chuffed.