Hi.
I have a kid in K who is in speech therapy. While I understand that there’s plenty of phonetic sounds that I couldn’t teach and she had a delay with one year off in Pre-K when it closed. She was diagnosed with speech sound disorder.
Initially, I was excited that she would receive help for her speech in ways that I couldn’t provide. I studied English in school, but have no experience teaching toddlers. I don’t know where the mouth/ tongue/ teeth go in order to help her make letters and how to get her to copy me. I also had a huge problem with getting very sad when she got upset that I didn’t understand what she was saying. I thought speech therapy would help and did notice improvements.
However, I noticed that her classmates act like she can’t talk (one literally said that) and people criticize her speech to me, in front of her. I can’t help but wonder and worry whether this is giving her anxiety, potentially making it worse. I know that some children learn by copying what their peers sound like — but how is she supposed to do that if I think she’s been singled out?
Anyone have any idea how much of speech therapy is really just improved social skills and fitting in and how much is the actual time spent doing it? I would like to pull her out of it, but the school is also saying that I can’t do that and mandating two more years. I only approved one. So, I’m not liking how they aren’t listening to me because I will not have a way to verify whether they are motivated for their own job or if she needs more help. I don’t have any reason to think this way, just the cynic in me is bothered.
When I received my child’s report card, letter sounds she could say at home were marked wrong. Then, it really escalated with the teacher complaining about her lack of progress. I hear slow progress, but notice each new phrase and sound. The teacher wants to bring in more people
I’m against that because I don’t know if I can be there to observe the interaction. I have yet to see anything harmful happen to her in a speech therapy setting. But, I do worry that some people will do testing on her or make rude comments about her speech in front of her. Honestly, I have had friends who were teachers with big drinking and drug problems. You cannot always control what teachers say. I’m also worried they will make her feel like some sort of clinical specimen.
With social skills and speech disorders, can treating make it harder on the child?
I know this is not about me. However, I found that getting negative feedback and hearing she is still struggling really sucks. Part of it has also got to be possible fear or her peers. I’ll say I have been very anxious about this all week. I’m afraid that I will get angry at them if they are too mean to her or inappropriate.
2 comments
What you have done so far isn’t working, you are looking at extreme situations and extrapolating them to your child’s life.
I think what you should do is take your hands off the reigns a bit and take some deep breaths. It sounds like you have severe anxiety and a little bit of cognitive behavior therapy could be of benefit to you.
Think about it this way, if you let your fears pull her out and she never gets better, can you accept that it is entirely your own fault for damaging her future?
https://www.agentsofspeech.com
This guy teaches people to do speech therapy themselves at home. He has a good bit of free stuff and I think his full program is only like $30, or it was when I bought it years ago. Why don’t you look into teaching yourself, then trying to teach in addition to what they are doing.
Nobody on Reddit can answer your questions, the worst case scenario is you get an echo chamber of your fears and you pull your child out of therapy they desperately need.
Personally one of the reasons I divorced my ex was because they refused to accept our child had autism, and they were sabotaging their therapies both at home and medically.
Now my child after ramping up therapy has actually begun to speak, it’s hard.
It’s absolutely hard having a child with a delay or difference than other folk. But don’t for a second think some idiot internet guru who’s making money on on advertisement revenue saying words that make you feel good, or is selling you smelling oils has your child’s best interest at heart.
It’s scary knowing you can’t help your kids, that doesn’t mean other people are failing them or that you need to look for flaws in the flawed human beings trained to work on these issues with children.
I have a child that had to have several years of speech therapy. They were completely nonverbal until over the age of 4; yes, they are on the autism spectrum. Eventually, intensive speech therapy led to their ability to verbally communicate which was a relief for both them and me to be able to start communicating. They didn’t put multiple words together until they were ~6.
In the process of seeking treatment, other things were tested that can affect speech such as hearing and something called being tongue tied. I had never heard of tongue tied but actually it’s a thing. Our next child was born tongue tied. Apparently this sort of thing is easily corrected but does make a difference in speech ability and may be worth looking into. We chose to wait to see if the tongue tie issue would correct itself and it did but when our tongue tied child first started speaking, it was difficult to understand what they were saying.
Something that I would do to alleviate some of the frustration was ask them to show me what they were talking about. I wouldn’t say I didn’t or couldn’t understand them even though I couldn’t understand them because that is something that hurt and confuses them. Just be patient and ask them to show you as calmly as possible, remember they’re capable of understanding you. It took some time and use of the techniques learned/practiced with their sibling.