Speech evaluation for my 4 year old… do I really need it?

[Anonymous]

My son just turned 4 and is in preschool (3 hours/day). We speak several languages at home. My son understand all 3 languages, but always responds in English and sometimes uses a word or two in our other languages (I believe he does not do this at school).
He seems to have some articulation issues and the teachers think we may want to do an evaluation. They mentioned tht at 4 100% of what he says should be easily understandable and with my son is closer to 70%. He has trouble with a couple of letters sounds.
He speaks in full sentences and a lot so we are only worried about articulation.

Will he pick up those missing sounds on his own or does he need therapist to teach him?
TIA

[Anonymous]

As someone who was in a similar situation and took a wait and see approach, my kid is still having trouble with the same sounds at 6 and getting speech therapy. I wish we'd got it sooner.

[Anonymous]

Get evaluated now and get speech therapy. It will resolve much faster with help.

[Anonymous]

At least get him evaluated. There is no harm is seeing what they think and getting support if needed.

[Anonymous]

SLP here. The preschool teachers are incorrect, by age 5 we want to understand 100 percent, but a child may still have a few tricky sounds. At age 4, 75%-90% understandable is acceptable. It really depends on the sounds that your child's having difficulty with at this age.

[Anonymous]

Earlier is better when it comes to speech. Get an eval.

[Anonymous]

I did take my kid for a speech eval after the preschool teachers suggested it. They know what they are talking about and earlier is better. You only risk having the evaluator disagree and say no speech services needed at this time.

[Anonymous]

They see tons of kids and are best situated to compare him to peers/typical development. If they are raising it, it's something that's worth checking out.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thank you! I contacted a SLP and the wait time is 6 months to 1 year. I will look into other places. please let me know if you have any suggestions.

My son has trouble sounding out the “s”, but also some words are not pronounced correctly even though he can make all the sounds (“grul” instead of “girl” and “aminal” instead of “animal”… these are the two words I can think of but there might be a few more).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They see tons of kids and are best situated to compare him to peers/typical development. If they are raising it, it's something that's worth checking out.

+100. It’s more trouble than it’s worth to give parents “bad news” so I would act on it.

[Anonymous]

Does your county have services?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone who was in a similar situation and took a wait and see approach, my kid is still having trouble with the same sounds at 6 and getting speech therapy. I wish we'd got it sooner.

Exactly this. We are dealing with 2x/week therapy now at 7 and it is... a total and complete pain in the butt.

[Anonymous]

My son is similar and it turned out he also had a hearing issue that was not obvious. If you have not had his hearing tested make sure they do that as part of the evaluation!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: SLP here. The preschool teachers are incorrect, by age 5 we want to understand 100 percent, but a child may still have a few tricky sounds. At age 4, 75%-90% understandable is acceptable. It really depends on the sounds that your child's having difficulty with at this age.

4s/5s preschool teacher here and I came to say this.
Based on the articulation errors you describe (s sound, some switching) it sounds developmental. That said, it doesn’t hurt to get an evaluation done. Where are you located? Your pediatrician should be able to refer you to a local resource such as Child Find.

[Sissi2mom]

Thank you everyone. We are in NW DC. Our school teacher sent us some names and I will get in touch tomorrow.