Another Speech Question: Does ds need ST?

[nitascool]

I see a lot of children with special needs having speech therapy. Every time I hear about the stories the children are 2 or older and not talking at all... or no one can understand anything they say, not even mom.

So I've been hesitant to get my little man ST. My dh had ST when he was in elementary school and has been trying to work with ds from what he can recall, but it is becoming increasingly obvious to both he and I that ds isn't getting the gentle correction that we are offering.

He is 3yo will be 4 in September. He usually speaks in complete sentences (except when he is tired). He has been asking to learn to read. But he does not have a grasp of the short vowel sounds yet and he has a hard time with double consonant blends at the beginning of words, he also drops the endings of some words. I foresee trouble in learning phonetic reading (the method that my older 2 used) if he doesn't learn these skills soon.

He has trouble with words beginning with n and th... He will say things like "I heed dat toy". Other words patterns he mispronounces are; octopus (otu puss), yes (yusss)[sticks out tongue with all words using s no matter where it is in the word. He pronounces z the same way.], what is that (sat), rocket (rackit), angry (Anry), baby (beaby), ball (bouw), black (back), blue (boo), treasure (tweaser), card (cur), hand (han), brown (grown), darn it (garnet), and so on.

For those of you with children in ST do you think that he needs therapy or should I wait a little longer and see if he grows past it?

[Cadam]

It sounds like a lisp and possible tongue thrust issues.

Please get him to an SLP. One of 2 things will happen. The SLP will say it is fine and age appropriate and he grows out of it. OR you find out he needs ST and he gets it, his speech is corrected and he goes on his happy way. There is no bad outcome, and it simply can not hurt to have the evaluation.

Often these things are hereditary so if your dh was in ST then you have all the more reason to have your ds evaluated. My ds has a speech disorder and you better believe the rest of my kids were watched like hawks to make sure speech developed normally and on time. I will watch my grandchildren too, with equal care because I know they have a better than average chance of speech and development issues.

SLP's want to get kids as early as possible. before the age of 3 really so your son is already old and past the "wait and see" mark by a year. As a mom who spent 4 years of my life in a speech clinic, I ask you to please have this child evaluated.

[jacqui in mo]

I would be mostly concerned with how he is pronouncing the N and some of the vowel sounds, and maybe the final L sound (as in Ball). Most of the other sounds have time to develop on their own unless he's really, really hard to understand. I don't think it will make it impossible for him to learn to read though, but it does seem early for him to need to do that. I didn't start teaching my sons to read until they were 5 & the bulk of the productive reading instruction was done after they were 6.

I would suggest going ahead & getting a speech evaluation at this point, especially because of the way he is mispronouncing the N. It's kinda unusual to substitute an H sound for an N.

Has he had a lot of ear infections? Has he had hearing testing done?

Outta time now but if you have more questions feel free to PM me.

Jacqui

[nitascool]

Cadem what is SLP? I'm not sure what that is. Speech evaluator I'm guessing.

...Has he had a lot of ear infections? Has he had hearing testing done?...

He had one ear infection in March. So just once in his whole life. We've had his hearing tested, at birth and again last year (their previous Dr. felt it necessary to "cover our butt" as she called it because we homeschool and he would not be getting the normal preschool evaluations). So no there are no hearing issues. Just strange speech patterns.

As far as reading is concerned; I teach my children to read when they ask to do so. I do not use age as an indicator of readiness, but rather desire. However for him I have been diverting his requests because of his pronunciation problems.

He knows all the names and sounds of the letters, but can not reproduce them himself. When asked to will get the letters in words such as c -a - t, or f-r-o-g (magnets on refrigerator) he gets it correctly every time. So he does understand the sounds correctly. It's not from the ear to the brain, but from the brain to the mouth that is the issue that I am concerned about.

[jacqui in mo]

SLP stands for Speech Language Pathologist. The ear infection you noted would not then account for his speech errors. Actually most of his current speech patterns are normal developmental ones except what I noted in my post above. Most 4yo don't say blends well, or TH, or R , etc. Some can, but both are normal at this age. The real key though is how hard is it to understand him, especially for people outside the family. And the fact that he is mispronouncing the N the way he does makes me think it is time to get some speech therapy started. Putting it off may make the work more prolonged later if he doesn't grow out of the other mispronunciations.