Speech and Language Delay/Therapy

[Rocknrolla]

My son is 7 and he has been having speech therapy via a lovely therapist at the nhs. I take him once a week for around 30 mins, his sessions are in blocks of 6, so 6 weeks and he has had around 3 blocks of 6 spaced out within a year.
His therapy is to correct the way he pronounces his L’s and W’s all through play/games, plus lots of tasks for me to do with him at home.
He also sensory processing disorder, he seems to do great in the sessions but it’s like he can’t retain the information so quickly slips back into his habits. Since starting the therapy he has developed a stammer, which is worrying.

 

[aggytha]

I’ve noticed on a few threads people mentioning speech/language delays etc and I wondered if anyone would be interested in discussing their experiences of this and/or speech and language therapy?

Not necessarily looking for “success stories” as I know success is different to every individual and each child has their own specific needs, but I think it may be helpful to have a place to talk if others in similar situation feel they want to chat and/or support.

my daughter is 2 and a half and has been seeing a therapist privately since October. We have been told she has Expressive Language Delay and she has recently been seen on the NHS. We have been told she isn’t currently eligible for therapy sessions on the NHS.

 

[TheBlondeBuffoon]

My son aged 5 has just been discharged from SALT. He was referred at 18 months was under them until now. . He has phonological disorder. When we first got referred he had no speech sounds. Didn’t babble etc. He was assessed for autism (which he doesn’t have )and had blood tests, hearing tests and was seen by ent. All fine. It’s been a long hard road. But now his speech is amazing. Some sounds are still not quite there , but most people can understand him now. We are so proud of how far he’s come. Speech and language is amazing but it’s you as a parent that has to put in the hard work. They give you the tools but you need to go home and do the homework and use the strategies they teach you. It can feel so lonely and heartbreaking at times, but how far he’s come is amazing. When his therapist said he could be discharged I cried. He might need to go back in a few years if some of the missing sounds haven’t come on( he’s too young to do the work required right now).

I do feel like NHS provision is such a postcode lottery. We were so lucky that our GP and the therapist who first assessed him realised the severity of the situation and gave us that early intervention he needed.

 

[aggytha]

Thanks for starting the thread. My little girl is 4.5, she’s in her school’s speech therapy class but I don’t really know what they do - I understand it’s all through play. She has a mild intermittent stammer and some pronunciation issues - I said to the school I never pursued referral because I thought she’d just naturally grow out of it. The SENCO teacher agreed with me that that’s what often happens but she’s still seeing the speech therapist as part of a group.

I am a bit more inclined to get her some
1:1 sessions (despite cost) with the speech therapist the school employs tbh - partly so I can understand what is going on with her and how to help - because the school is great at most things but communicating with parents is pretty sh*t tbh.

Thank you for sharing- I sit in on my daughters private therapy sessions and it is all play based, I think this is the case for all young children. I do believe that around age 3 is when they officially start working on “speech sounds” though, but we are not at that stage yet.

We were similar to you in thinking she’d grow out of it, we assumed and were told (by relatives, some health professionals etc) that she would catch up in her own time. We chose to be proactive and use a private therapist as the delay was really starting to affect her behaviour and causing huge distress and frustration. We’re still not getting many new words yet, but the resources and support from our private therapist has been invaluable. I’m not sure how much costs vary, but I will say that £60 for 45-60 mins is not cheap

 

[Suzesnooze]

NHS speech therapy was successful for both my sons. My eldest son was worse. He was barely speaking age 4 and he had ST until he was 6 or 7. My other son was talking then regressed and his Nursery teacher suggested ST. His speech improved much quicker than my eldest sons.

It’s all play based and showing them pictures and getting them to say the sound eg. Shhhh for shorts (my son said skorts). I remember they used a lot of the Orchard toy games which I bought for home. This one in particular.

 

[Meg78]

My child uses echolalia as sole communication so mirrors everything said to them, can say whole sentences with 4+ syllable words included but it’s all an echo, they can’t generate their own language. I’m very used to it and liken it to standing in front of a lock with a set of 200 keys, it’s really overwhelming to figure out which one to use but if someone walked over and picked out the right key and showed it to me next time I’d know to reach straight for that key….. my kid does this with language, waits for us to hand them the correct phrase to use, so we say what the child would say, they mimic it, then next time they say the exact same phrase, and it works super well as then others understand what they want too.… but this system only works if they’re shown which key to use, and being at nursery means they aren’t doing that, I’ve had teachers refusing to acknowledge my child needs help at all and bark “use your words!” repeatedly because they couldn’t find the phrase to say what they needed. It makes me really angry but I can’t seem to get the teachers to comprehend how to help, and there’s no support at all from speech therapy in educating them.

Sorry for the rant, I guess what I’m trying to say is we as parents can only do so much, there’s such a lot of pressure on us all to work on things at home but it seems as if the education settings our children spend the most amount of time in don’t get the same pressure, so realistically how far can we really take our children when others aren’t meeting our level of effort?

 

[Rocknrolla]

I ended up contacting the speech therapist via Instagram as communicating via the school has proved fruitless. She has set up some 1:1 sessions with my little girl that will start after Easter. I feel like I have failed her as I didn’t really think her speech was that much of a problem but it looks like I’ve missed loads of signs. She has a stammer as well (NHS website very soon and gloom over stammers past the age of 5). I’ve just taken a look at the SLT’s website and she does cover stammers too so I hope they will be able to make progress together. It hurts my heart I’ve not proactively done anything with this before now, I didn’t think she was much different to any other child but my husband went to school with her the other day and he said the other children are so fluent her speech really stands out. I think it’s affecting her phonics work as well. She’s very clever but I worry that with her speech issues it’s causing problems with her phonics too. I feel like such a sh*t mum, clearly I’ve just been hoping it goes away rather than tackling it head on earlier.

The advice I’ve been given by the therapist regarding stammers is to completely ignore it, as difficult as it is not to comfort them with something like “take your time”. Not acknowledging it all doesn’t highlight anything is wrong/different to them I suppose and gives them one less thing to worry about regarding speech.

 

[WeHadFunRight]

The advice I’ve been given by the therapist regarding stammers is to completely ignore it, as difficult as it is not to comfort them with something like “take your time”. Not acknowledging it all doesn’t highlight anything is wrong/different to them I suppose and gives them one less thing to worry about regarding speech.

Thank you - we do ignore it as it’s just part of her and doesn’t bother her - but I’m aware of it. It doesn’t seem to frustrate her at all. Hopefully her speech therapist can help.

 

[aggytha]

My little one has recently been accepted for speech and language intervention on the nhs. They will be 3 in June. They say some words but not many (around 13). This has been a battle on going for over a year to get help, the originally had a referral at the start of last year as their speech regressed at around 15 months and they stopped saying everything (mama, dada etc). We had a phone an assessment last year and they then closed the case due to their age. But have finally been accepted for S+L therapy on the NHS. I’ve no idea what it entails or how we got accepted as my little one is finally starting to say words, I guess maybe it’s because their speech isn’t at the “developmental norm” stage they would except for their age.

mine is 3 in July. She has around 10 words. We had her first NHS assessment a few weeks ago and were told we wouldn’t be put on the waiting list for therapy. Instead we are on “open access” which means we can contact them in the next 6 if we see no improvement and they will review her again I gather it varies based on NHS trust.

 

[SleepyDibillo]

I’m so glad I found this thread. My child was referred at age 3 for pronunciation and stammer. It was almost a year before we got the first assessment, due to covid. The assessor said they’d had a 50% increase in referrals since covid. Since then we’ve had a separate assessment for pronunciation which is only slightly behind, and numerous telephone appointments for stammer which is on going.

I find the whole NHS process incredibly frustrating. Everything seems so disjointed and we still have no practical support/ one on one sessions for our child. The school have also had zero contact from s&l in the 6 months my child has been there.

 

[Rocknrolla]

My son has the only mentioned his once, I said to my partner “oh I forgot what I was going to say then” and he said “like me mum?” He said it in a jokingly way but it still broke my heart.
We’re on holiday this week and reading your post has made me realise he hasn’t stammered once since we’ve been here x

 

[geegeex]

My little one has recently been accepted for speech and language intervention on the nhs. They will be 3 in June. They say some words but not many (around 13). This has been a battle on going for over a year to get help, the originally had a referral at the start of last year as their speech regressed at around 15 months and they stopped saying everything (mama, dada etc). We had a phone an assessment last year and they then closed the case due to their age. But have finally been accepted for S+L therapy on the NHS. I’ve no idea what it entails or how we got accepted as my little one is finally starting to say words, I guess maybe it’s because their speech isn’t at the “developmental norm” stage they would except for their age.

 

[aggytha]

I’m so glad I found this thread. My child was referred at age 3 for pronunciation and stammer. It was almost a year before we got the first assessment, due to covid. The assessor said they’d had a 50% increase in referrals since covid. Since then we’ve had a separate assessment for pronunciation which is only slightly behind, and numerous telephone appointments for stammer which is on going.

I find the whole NHS process incredibly frustrating. Everything seems so disjointed and we still have no practical support/ one on one sessions for our child. The school have also had zero contact from s&l in the 6 months my child has been there.

I completely understand and share your frustration with the NHS system. Instead of being put on the waiting list for therapy sessions, we are on “open access” which essentially means, we can contact them again with any concerns we may have over the next 6 months (but have to provide evidence?!) and they will do another assessment. If they don’t hear from us, she will be discharged.

 

[WeHadFunRight]

Thanks for starting the thread. My little girl is 4.5, she’s in her school’s speech therapy class but I don’t really know what they do - I understand it’s all through play. She has a mild intermittent stammer and some pronunciation issues - I said to the school I never pursued referral because I thought she’d just naturally grow out of it. The SENCO teacher agreed with me that that’s what often happens but she’s still seeing the speech therapist as part of a group.

I am a bit more inclined to get her some
1:1 sessions (despite cost) with the speech therapist the school employs tbh - partly so I can understand what is going on with her and how to help - because the school is great at most things but communicating with parents is pretty sh*t tbh.

 

[aggytha]

Does anyone have any recommendations on speech and language resources, or things at home that you’ve found helpful?

my little one uses a PECS book (she is able to form short sentences with this but sometimes doesn’t gravitate towards the book and needs encouragement to use it) and we also use some aided language sheets.

Would love to hear of any games/toys/books/resources/activities/online things etc others use.

 

[geegeex]

mine is 3 in July. She has around 10 words. We had her first NHS assessment a few weeks ago and were told we wouldn’t be put on the waiting list for therapy. Instead we are on “open access” which means we can contact them in the next 6 if we see no improvement and they will review her again I gather it varies based on NHS trust.

Yes it must do as I was convinced my little one would get knocked back again as the waiting list is huge. We live in Scotland though so it may be different.

 

[Megansnarkle]

My son is 7 and he has been having speech therapy via a lovely therapist at the nhs. I take him once a week for around 30 mins, his sessions are in blocks of 6, so 6 weeks and he has had around 3 blocks of 6 spaced out within a year.
His therapy is to correct the way he pronounces his L’s and W’s all through play/games, plus lots of tasks for me to do with him at home.
He also sensory processing disorder, he seems to do great in the sessions but it’s like he can’t retain the information so quickly slips back into his habits. Since starting the therapy he has developed a stammer, which is worrying.

If he's slipping back into his habits between sessions, have you asked what you can do to reinforce what is done in the sessions?

 

[WeHadFunRight]

I ended up contacting the speech therapist via Instagram as communicating via the school has proved fruitless. She has set up some 1:1 sessions with my little girl that will start after Easter. I feel like I have failed her as I didn’t really think her speech was that much of a problem but it looks like I’ve missed loads of signs. She has a stammer as well (NHS website very soon and gloom over stammers past the age of 5). I’ve just taken a look at the SLT’s website and she does cover stammers too so I hope they will be able to make progress together. It hurts my heart I’ve not proactively done anything with this before now, I didn’t think she was much different to any other child but my husband went to school with her the other day and he said the other children are so fluent her speech really stands out. I think it’s affecting her phonics work as well. She’s very clever but I worry that with her speech issues it’s causing problems with her phonics too. I feel like such a sh*t mum, clearly I’ve just been hoping it goes away rather than tackling it head on earlier.