Speech therapy question

[anoushka]

DS is a late talker (20 months, babbles a lot but no "real" words), and he's been going to speech therapy at his pediatrician's recommendation. We've had about 8-10 30-minute sessions so far (twice a week), and there's been no progress yet. The therapist basically just plays with him on the floor with different toys and emphasizes different words - "more," "baby," "again," etc. This is what we do with him all the time at home, as well as reading books, which she doesn't do at all. I'm just wondering - are we expecting too much to see some progress at this point? Should we consider switching therapists? I know nothing about speech therapy so I'm not sure what it usually involves.

[Brie]

osulori

[Deleted]

That is what it involves, particularly at this age.

I wouldn't switch therapists. I would decrease frequency of appointments if you feel like you have a good handle on what to do for now. Just make sure you're doing what she's been doing often at home.

[lilac05]

A good therapist for 0-3 kids will just look like she's playing with your kid. What you don't see/hear is that each one of those toys have been carefully selected by the therapist with a specific goal in mind. Each word she says is also carefully chosen and has a purpose. Some kids make really quick progress, others take longer. I wouldn't ditch her just yet, unless you just have a bad gut feeling. Never doubt your gut.

As a therapist, I'm always happy to talk to parents and explain a little about what I'm doing and why. You can just ask, and see if there's anything you can do a little differently at home to build on what she's doing. Honestly, one of the biggest compliments I can receive is that it looks like I'm "just playing" with a child. That means I'm targeting things in a very natural way, which has been shown to be best for the kids.

As far as reading, if I'm working with a child I know is exposed to lots of books at home, I may not do much in therapy sessions. That's something parents can do very well. My time can be better utilized doing other activities. Reading is SO important, but for 0-3 kids, there's not a lot I do differently than an involved, reading parent.

Don't hesitate to ask your therapist questions!

[anoushka]

Jun 24, 2015 10:51:47 GMT -5 lilac05 said:

Honestly, one of the biggest compliments I can receive is that it looks like I'm "just playing" with a child.

This is exactly what I have been thinking, so maybe we're doing just fine! Thanks for the info.

[lilac05]

Jun 24, 2015 10:56:45 GMT -5 anoushka said:

Jun 24, 2015 10:51:47 GMT -5 lilac05 said:

Honestly, one of the biggest compliments I can receive is that it looks like I'm "just playing" with a child.

This is exactly what I have been thinking, so maybe we're doing just fine! Thanks for the info.

I'm happy to help!

Always trust your gut, though & never hesitate to ask questions!  Though they are the minority, there are bad therapists out there.  If you or your child don't click with the therapist, see if there's something you can do to fix it.  If not, move along to someone else if possible.  

[abs]

We didn't see any pay off from speech therapy until the 6 month mark. Our SLP was working hard to introduce new sounds and patterns via play but we didn't see progress in the form of words until we had been in therapy for awhile. At a certain point everything clicked and sentences came tumbling out. After a year and a half of private therapy we were discharged. It took lots of hard work and some patience to get there.

[cleosprite]

We didn't see a lot of progress early on either. I'd definitely ask your therapist questions...what's the goal for today, what can we be doing at home to support, etc.

We actually didn't see much progress until he started a 2's preschool. I think seeing other kids talk and having to communicate with an adult who wasn't used to his quirks really helped everything click into place. You might ask your therapist if there's any groups like that that might help.

[anoushka]

Jun 24, 2015 11:23:12 GMT -5 cleosprite said:

We actually didn't see much progress until he started a 2's preschool.

I have been considering this too... right now a family member who speaks a different language watches him most days, so I'm sure that's not helping things either. 

[stephm0188]

That's what it looked like for my son. It's not an overnight process and it takes time.

[osulori]

Thanks Brie! And ditto lilac05 100%

[4speedy]

I have two kids who went through county based EI speech. It was a joke. My older child had one therapist who was always late, never prepared and kind of lazy. We stuck with her for 6 months and finally just told her to stop coming. I received advice on what to do from a friend who is an SLP and we did a lot of play therapy on our own. The therapist asked if she could come back a few months later so she could retest DD and officially release her from the program. DD tested well ahead of her peer group at that time. Luckily, she was just a late talker.

DS had more severe difficulties and needed more intensive therapy. His first county provided therapist was a non-native English speaker and had a really thick accent. She and my son really struggled to communicate with each other and it was frustrating for all three of us.

The second therapist was always apologizing for not being prepared or having the right activities with her. She always blamed it on not having enough items for all the therapists to share so if she didn't get to the office early enough, all the good stuff was gone. Apparently she was not an early riser because she was never able to do the activities she really wanted to do with DS.

Then we aged out of the county program and were transferred to school based therapy at age 3. That therapist spent the year treating my son as though he had autism. She clearly had her own agenda. She complimented DS on his eye contact profusely. Because eye contact was never ever an issue for him. One time he was distracted by a new toy and failed to look up when she entered the room. So she spent the entire session doing eye contact exercises with him, the whole time remarking how good he was with eye contact. I asked why we needed to keep working on eye contact since according to her, he was so good at it and besides, all of DS's difficulties were with speech production and not any other aspect of of language/communication. She also wanted to spend a lot of time getting my son to ask for help more frequently. The thing is, my DS would ask for help all the time, but when nobody could understand his speech except me, he just stopped asking anyone but me. She would purposely give him toys that were too difficult for him to figure out with the goal of getting him to have to ask her for help. But he was so used to me being the only one who understood him that he would always bring the toy right back to me. That always made the therapist scribble like crazy on her legal pad because apparently 3 year olds are supposed to be able to ask others for help. My DS was diagnosed by a private therapist with apraxia of speech. Thie school therapist spent more time treating my son for the warning signs of autism rather than working on speech production for the diagnosis he actually had. she was so intent on treating my son like he had autism, I figured she must be receiving grants from some autism awareness group so she had to document that she was spreading autism awareness to the families she served.

My son is now 6 and still needs more work. Thankfully, we've paid out of pocket for twice weekly private therapy in addition to the county/school therapy. The private therapists have been worth their weight in gold. I know what good therapy looks like because I've seen it. Unfortunately, the public therapists seem stretched so thin, underfunded and are given such narrow parameters to work under that they couldn't meet the specific needs of my son. And yet I can't bring myself to "quit" the school therapy because I am terrified of not doing "enough" for my son. Toward the end of this school year, DS was finally starting to just shut down when it came time to go down to speech, so maybe this is the year we finally just let it go.

[Deleted]

My DD started speech therapy at 18 months. We did an in home speech therapist and later some speech therapy groups. At exactly 24 months she had the language explosion and was released. She did have 5 months of speech groups with the school district at age 4 this spring but I think she won't have to do more in the fall. It was just a few speech sounds. AND, i feel like 2's preschool at 2 mornings a week was a huge help.

[pb127]

Jun 24, 2015 11:06:14 GMT -5 lilac05 said:

Jun 24, 2015 10:56:45 GMT -5 anoushka said:

This is exactly what I have been thinking, so maybe we're doing just fine! Thanks for the info.

I'm happy to help!

Always trust your gut, though & never hesitate to ask questions!  Though they are the minority, there are bad therapists out there.  If you or your child don't click with the therapist, see if there's something you can do to fix it.  If not, move along to someone else if possible.  

This is great advice and I wish someone would have told me this! My DD started speech therapy last fall at one place and she really didn't click with the therapist and neither did I. I was also very irritated that we were paying $$$$ for the sessions and at the start of each session, the therapist would ask me what we did in the previous session (all the sessions were with her and she wasn't asking what we did at home). We stopped going after about a month and I was very frustrated/disappointed that maybe ST wouldn't help her.

A few weeks ago, we started fresh at a new place and DD and I both click with the therapist, and I can already see a big improvement. She still has a substantial delay, but I feel optimistic that we are on the right track! Oh and yes, it's all playtime at this age (DD is almost 2.5) or us too. Hope it goes well for your DS too!! 

[origami]

We have had some terrible speech therapists and ended up having to go private like 4speedy, but I think using toys to get a child <2 to repeat a sound (or word) is normal. Once they repeat sounds you just build up from there, from our experience. My kids wouldn't repeat full words at first so the SLP had them repeat the first sound of the word and build into the full word. So "mah" instead of more. She also tried to get them to do sign language. Is your SLP trying different tactics or just doing exactly the same thing every session?

[namasteak]

I think the pedi is going to recommend ST for DS when we go to his 18mo appointment this thread is really helpful!

[anoushka]

Jun 24, 2015 21:36:52 GMT -5 origami said:

Is your SLP trying different tactics or just doing exactly the same thing every session?

She's doing the same thing every session. That's part of what I've been wondering about - she's had no success with it so far.