Want to Talk about Son's Speech Therapy.

Does/did anyone else have a child in speech therapy? We have a 6 year old son (will be 7 next month) in 1st grade.

Our son met all his developmental milestones except those concerning speech by the time he was 3 years old. He was very slow to speak (delivery speed was always fine, he just didn't talk for quite some time), and had a vocabulary in the low double digits when he was 3.

We sought help, and the school district had a program with play therapy (socializing with other children) and speech therapy, and we also got a private speech therapist on our own.

We met with the speech therapist from the school district today, and she informs us he is doing great. He is above average in one category, and average in the others (all speech and comprehension related). He is progressing well, and I doubt if most people would even know he has language delays. I'm not even sure if he still could be considered to have them, but he does still qualify for help from the school district in the form of speech therapy 2-4 times a month, just down the hall from his classroom.

We took him out of private speech therapy a few months ago (it was my idea) because he is doing so well, and he keeps making remarkable progressions. My wife wonders if we should go back to the private speech therapist. We asked the opinion of the speech therapist from the school district, and she wasn't all that concerned about a private therapist. Our insurance company was also fighting us on the issue.

My wife still wonders about it. My argument is that our son was really starting to object to going, and I doubted how effective it was. They're more concerned with him making correct speech sounds, while the school district is more concerned with comprehension and his ability to express himself.

It was really frustrating when we first got him involved with the school district, they wondered about his hearing (never an issue), and diagnosed him as being on the autism spectrum (something the private speech therapist never mentioned). I've looked at the diagnosing criteria, and our son's behavior doesn't even fit the symptoms. He just had language delays. No one is even bringing it up the possibility anymore. His kindergarten teacher said something like "I've been teaching kids for decades, and what they're saying just doesn't apply to him", when he started kindergarten, and she looked at their notes. He did very well in kindergarten (last school year), no real issues to report.

No real issues to report from his 1st grade teacher, either. But, we will meet with her one on one later this week.

Sometimes I even wonder if he would have had the same outcome no matter what we did. He was just one of those kids who didn't talk much early on, and now he is a regular chatter box, lol.

I don't have a child in speech therapy but I do have an ASD child and can tell you that conflicting specialists are a problem. My son has global delay disorder which deals with fine and gross motor skills. We had 2 different therapists working with him, each of them had their own goals, etc. I was very confusing to my son. It is my opinion that working with one therapist at a time is the way to go. If the therapy at the school is working then I would just continue that.

My son had speech and fine motor delays and received speech therapy and occupational therapy through elementary school. For him it wasn't just a slow start; his delays were ongoing and did affect his progress in school and outside of school. The greatest focus for him was on using his language to express what he was thinking and needed. By the time he hit middle school, most of the speech issues were more under control. They did continue to monitor him through middle school.

If it doesn't seem to be affecting him in school or out, it sounds like services probably aren't necessary. It is good for them to keep monitoring him as he goes through the next year or so. As school becomes more challenging, different issues might emerge.

I looked over the info and evaluation (from the meeting yesterday) that we got from the school district, and he is slightly below average in a few areas (related to speech and comprehension), so that's how they justify continued speech therapy at school. And that's just fine

I wouldn't stop speech therapy at school for sure.

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