Frustrations signing up for kid's speech therapy


Jane_Doe
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Hi, I’m writing this to see if other people have had similar experiences signing up for speech therapy (or any other kind), or if my experience is unusual.  

Little girl is turning 3 and has poor pronunciation.  We’ve been taking her to a speech therapist the last couple of months, for 30 minutes every other week.  Honestly it has not been that helpful.   She just tells us “you guys are doing great and she’s making so much progress, keeping doing what you’re doing.” 

Age 3 is a bureaucratic line in the sand so we have to get a new therapist and entirely evaluated over again (she just finished getting evaluated in Sept).  They just can’t evaluate her speech, but also need to test how well she walks backward, play tea party, colors and aims throwing a ball.  Factoring in drive time, paper work time, actually meeting people time, this evaluation takes about 14 hours spread over 6 days.  It’s a pain.

My daughter has gotten the idea that the therapy place is a play ground- cause that’s what she in the therapist do, play toys and talk about them.  Every time we go or see someone new, they have more new toys to play with.   While getting evaluated, they bring new toys every 10 minutes, and DD loves “More toys! More toys!”  She loves playing with the new toys, but doesn’t want to always quit playing with the favorite old toys.  We parents are supposed to sit back and do nothing during this whole time. 

And then the assessment back complaining how my 3 doesn’t wants to play with certain toys and not others, and how she has lots of energy.  Duh, she’s 3.  Oh, and she doesn’t want to walk down the stairs without holding the handrail- duh, over Christmas she catapulted down an entire flight and through a door and onto tile).  Oh, and her pronunciation is poor-- which is exactly what we told them in the first place!

I’m very frustrated.  Does anyone else have experience with this type of thing?  Am I crazy here?

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I used to be a speech therapist. This was about 30 years ago. At that time field ws not very professional. at that time, very little research had even done eg try one method on one group of children.  Try another method on another group. What works best?

 I do think that practising making sounds correctly can be helpful. I would try another speech therapist because it sounds like they are just spinning their wheels. When I was in the field we did some diagnostics but most of it did not affect what we did with the child. Most diagnostics are a waste of time because it does not change the therapy. By the way, the homework that they get you to do that IS the therapy.

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1 hour ago, Sunday21 said:

 I do think that practising making sounds correctly can be helpful.

So, how do you get them to pronounce a sound that they can't pronounce?  My 14 y.o. can't pronounce an "R" to save his life.

Edited by Guest
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I don't have experience with a child in speech therapy, but I have experience as a child IN speech therapy. It helped me a lot. But from what I have seen and heard about rpesent-day practice, I would not be eager to put my child in such a position.

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Guest LiterateParakeet

I have.  One of my sons had speech therapy and it helped a lot.  

My other son was evaluated (only one session for the evaluation, but he did get to play with toys and he loved it.)  They said he would definitely benefit from speech therapy, but they had a long waiting list.  They suggested I try the school.  The school said his speech impairment was not significant enough to warrant therapy.  So I took their word for it (my mistake).  Fast-forward about five years, now he's 10, and harder to understand than ever (poor boy!)  I talked to the school district (we're homeschoolers, but we use a co-op through the school.)  His teacher had to fight for him because all their times were full, but he did it.  My son starts next week.  Phew! 

All that to say, yes it is a maddening process, but better to deal with it now.  The problem will likely no go away on it's own  

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1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

So, how do you get them to pronounce a sound that they can't pronounce?  My 14 y.o. can't pronounce an "R" to save his life.

How old is son? Boys develop sounds later. Many kids don't make good r sounds until 8-9 years old. Especially at the end of words.

But if you want to try.

R sound:

Growl like a dog.

First step, you try growling like a dog. Put your hand over your voice box. See how it vibrates?

Demonstrate your growling to son. Put his hands over your voicebox.

Now, you ask him to growl like a dog. Put his hands over his voice box.

Try 5 times per week, about 15 minutes at a time. Then practice one syllable words beginning in r. Eg red not bread.

Give it several weeks

Then try at end of words. Fur not burnt.

Edited by Sunday21
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1 hour ago, Sunday21 said:

How old is son? Boys develop sounds later. Many kids don't make good r sounds until 8-9 years old. Especially at the end of words.

3 hours ago, Carborendum said:

So, how do you get them to pronounce a sound that they can't pronounce?  My 14 y.o. can't pronounce an "R" to save his life.

1 hour ago, Sunday21 said:

R sound:

Growl like a dog.

My son can't growl like a dog.  It sounds like "guhhh".

1 hour ago, Sunday21 said:

Try 5 times per week, about 15 minutes at a time. Then practice one syllable words beginning in r. Eg red not bread.

Then try at end of words. Fur not burnt.

I have him say "Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer".  Then I give him words with "r" in the middle.

 

Edited by Guest
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23 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

My son can't growl like a dog.  It sounds like "guhhh".

I'm no speech therapist, so take this with a pile of salt, but I did learn 3 languages (native +2) and from that, it seems to me this is the sound you would naturally make if your tongue were not in the right position for making an r sound.  Have you by chance shown him a cut-away of where your tongue is supposed to be to make an r sound?  Or explained that position (picture's better, IMO)?  (This is the end of my clueless advice.)

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The rhotic "r" is probably the most difficult sound in the English language, and is one of the hardest of all sounds to pronounce. Or so I am told.

EDIT: It appeas that the American "r" is called the "retroflex approximate". "Rhotic" technically refers to pronouncing the "r" in all situations, such as at the ends of words, or whether such an "r" is elided or dropped altogether (as in most accents around England).

Edited by Vort
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11 minutes ago, Vort said:

The rhotic "r" is probably the most difficult sound in the English language, and is one of the hardest of all sounds to pronounce. Or so I am told.

And so I'm also told.  The s is the next hardest.  Or so I'm told.

In any case, speech therapy is practice, practice, practice... with demonstration.  So yes, play and talking are important parts of it (toys are the stuff of knowledge at 3 years old - the Montessori elementary classroom is all toys... each toy developing certain skillsets, so it's not just any toy you buy from Toys R Us).  But demonstration needs to be in it too.

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I had speech therapy in elementary school. 

I distinctly remember my therapist helping me visualize the position that my tongue needed to be in to make different sounds... Alot of time and repetition was spent on the R sound.

Sorry I know that does not help much with the frustration with trying to get in to see one... but it seemed supportive of the direction the thread was/is going.

 

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4 minutes ago, zil said:

Yes, Spanish and Russian R sounds are different from English too - harder.

Because America just has to be different.  Soccer instead of football.  Fahrenheit instead of Celsius.  Color instead of colour.  Oh, T and P also sound different in the US than in the Philippines.

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12 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

Soccer instead of football.

"Association football" became "soccer". Not unreasonable. Rugby, another variation of 19th-century football, took its name from the Rugby School, a boarding school attended by several of the men who founded the original rugby league. American football is appropriately called "football", and still resembles rugby. The American terminology makes more sense, because specifying association football as "soccer" leaves the general term "football" appropriate to refer unambiguously to the American varieties. (Except for Aussie rules football, which is an extremely cool game, and would probably be even cooler to me if I understood the rules.)

Speaking of football, American football is vastly superior to "soccer" in viewer entertainment. But that's not saying much, sort of like saying it's better than baseball. Rugby has it all over the both of them. I wish we had rugby leagues like we have football leagues. Now there's a man's sport. No body armor for them.

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57 minutes ago, Vort said:

The rhotic "r" is probably the most difficult sound in the English language, and is one of the hardest of all sounds to pronounce. Or so I am told.

EDIT: It appeas that the American "r" is called the "retroflex approximate". "Rhotic" technically refers to pronouncing the "r" in all situations, such as at the ends of words, or whether such an "r" is elided or dropped altogether (as in most accents around England).

"Glories stream from heaven afar, Heavenly host sing Alleluiar(?)" 

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9 minutes ago, Vort said:

"Association football" became "soccer". Not unreasonable. Rugby, another variation of 19th-century football, took its name from the Rugby School, a boarding school attended by several of the men who founded the original rugby league. American football is appropriately called "football", and still resembles rugby. The American terminology makes more sense, because specifying association football as "soccer" leaves the general term "football" appropriate to refer unambiguously to the American varieties. (Except for Aussie rules football, which is an extremely cool game, and would probably be even cooler to me if I understood the rules.)

Speaking of football, American football is vastly superior to "soccer" in viewer entertainment. But that's not saying much, sort of like saying it's better than baseball. Rugby has it all over the both of them. I wish we had rugby leagues like we have football leagues. Now there's a man's sport. No body armor for them.

Spoken like a true American.  I'm gonna rear naked choke you for that comment.  :megaman:

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7 hours ago, Sunday21 said:

I used to be a speech therapist. This was about 30 years ago. At that time field ws not very professional. at that time, very little research had even done eg try one method on one group of children.  Try another method on another group. What works best?

I did not know that about you!

I went through speech therapy at school myself for a decade.  It didn't do a lick of good.  But that was also many years ago.

7 hours ago, Sunday21 said:

By the way, the homework that they get you to do that IS the therapy.

What they tell us to do at home is exactly what we've been doing all along.  It seems to be redundant to go to be told to keep doing what we are doing al along.

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