Anyone else think that speech therapy is a sham?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My preemie son had "free" early intervention speech therapy from 14 months to 3 years old, when he was declared "not delayed enough" to be eligible. While I loved our occupational therapist, who worked on sensory integration in his mouth, among other things, I did not like the speech therapist, not because she was not knowledgeable, but because she could not relate to my son and as a result, never elicited any meaningful response.

I also went to free Hanen groups (It Takes Two to Talk) during that time and that was helpful since it coached parents how to effectively communicate with their children.

Then we paid for private speech therapy and were again disappointed by the lack of visible results.
Finally, after entering public elementary school, my son was determined eligible for an IEP for speech. His speech therapist at school is WONDERFUL. She gets him. My son doesn't like her lessons, since they hit his weak points every time, but he has made progress!

Speech therapy for younger children is very, very challenging, and as a result most of the time does not yield immediate and visible results. It is so difficult to make a connection to each patient. But who can dare say that the positive results seen years afterward were not elicited during those first years? Perhaps future speech therapists only built on that base.

Keep at it, and keep implementing the strategies you learned.

OP here - thank you for your response.

[Anonymous]

OP here - we absolutely cannot supplement with more speech. I SAH, and we already qualify for zero payments since our income is so low. We paid a year of private speech for our older child in addition to preschool. We need to save money now for the twins' preschool coming up. Maybe I need to look into changing therapists. I feel like we just barely make it through the hour. In fact, we don't even use the whole hour doing stuff. I complained to our service coordinator earlier in the year because I felt like the activities that their therapist picked were so developmentally inappropriate. She did make changes and started doing a better job in my eyes. But, like I said before, it looks on the surface like a waste of time.

[Anonymous]

OP, I don't have any experience with speech therapy, but I read this forum a lot, and I know that a lot of people say the county-offered speech services can be pretty useless compared to a good private speech therapist. I have seen many people complain that the speech therapists offered for free through the county are focused on teaching parents how to teach their child, not on providing remediation services. Many many people urge others to not rely just on the free services but to supplement with private speech therapy.

I think you are going to get a lot of responses to this thread saying how wonderful speech therapy is, because of the title of the thread. You asked "is speech therapy a rip-off" so a lot of people are going to come on and tell you how wonderful good speech therapy was for them and their child!

If you had entitled the thread something like "Is county sponsored speech therapy less useful than private" or something like that, I bet you'd get a lot more people responding more to your concern.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My twins have been in Early Intervention (Fairfax) since they were born. They were preemies and also growth restricted. They did PT for a few months for some slight motor delays and caught up nicely. Then they transferred into speech therapy. We do not supplement with private speech. It has been a year. Each session, and they have 4 total a month, gets billed for $150/each. DH and I do not have to pay anything for the services, so the county pays for it all. That's approx. $7200/year spent on speech services. Twin A barely graduated out of speech this month, and Twin B is still delayed enough to qualify. I feel like it is an incredible waste of time and money. It was, however useful in the beginnings weeks because our SLP taught ME how to interact and teach them. How to elicit words and phrases, etc, etc. But, after a few months at the very most, I feel like it does absolutely nothing now. DH thinks it's a sham. I'm afraid to stop services because I feel like we need to do everything we can for our kids to help them and don't want to look back and think that I could have done more. Is this just me? My twins don't have any diagnosed special need other than being speech delayed. Ped and SLP think that they are catching up and just take longer to do things than their peers. I feel like if the county just gave us the same amount of money that they use on paying a speech therapist, I could spend it on other activities that would be more beneficial. For example, we payed for Gymboree for them and they learned way more from that class then from their speech sessions. Anyone else have this experience? Or do we just have a bad SLP? Oh, my kids are 2.25. Started speech at 16 months.

Your highlighted sentence above, OP, is the key here. Going private with speech is a must. I understand that finances may be tight but I assure you they can not possibly be tighter than they are with my family yet we have and are making the adjustments to afford private. Make it happen and make it happen for your kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - we absolutely cannot supplement with more speech. I SAH, and we already qualify for zero payments since our income is so low. We paid a year of private speech for our older child in addition to preschool. We need to save money now for the twins' preschool coming up. Maybe I need to look into changing therapists. I feel like we just barely make it through the hour. In fact, we don't even use the whole hour doing stuff. I complained to our service coordinator earlier in the year because I felt like the activities that their therapist picked were so developmentally inappropriate. She did make changes and started doing a better job in my eyes. But, like I said before, it looks on the surface like a waste of time.

Check with your insurance. We had to fight for it, but eventually our insurance did approve it and now pays.

Request a new therapist. We went through several therapist. We paid privately for one and we stopped as due to the cost/benefit. From 2-3, it was a waste of time. At 3, things are much improved and the interest to talk is there. Huge difference. We tried two different pathologists - one just sang songs and play games. We went several times. It was a 45 minute drive. She would only see us once a week for 30 minutes. She insisted my child could not do longer, when he could easily do 60-90 minutes and often longer. It was not worth the drive to do puzzles and sing songs with her on her cd player. Went to another one who did nothing but talk to me over my child. Went back to the first one (who knew we left for insurance reasons and was supportive) and that six month difference was huge. My child was much more engaging (she always was) and now we see great improvements. Not every therapist is a good fit for each family/child(ren). Its ok to request a new one and keep requesting till you find that fit (though with early intervention they may not allow that).

Personally, if they are making progress, then I'd wait a little longer then private pay. If they don't catch up with speech, they are going to have a tuff time in preschool depending on the school and how comfortable they are with the delay.

[Anonymous]

My DS was born 2 months early 13 years ago. He started SLT at 12 months (also had PT @ 9 months and OT @ 2 yrs). He continued SLT until he was 4 years old knowing that he may need to return once he was started school (i.e. learning to read). He did in fact return to SLT during 1st grade (6/7 years old) to help with his reading fluency.

SLT is NOT a sham! Language acquisition is a process and every child will respond at a different pace. When SLT was recommended for my DS I remember wondering if I would have trouble finding a therapist who would work with a child that young. The therapist who was recommended to us told me she actually PREFERS to work with kids at an early age because she can help to prevent the habits that form and cause speech problems later in life. She was able to work on his muscle development in order to help with articulation, etc. As this was addressed early she was able to then work on the word retrieval and understanding. Also, early invention has been proven to be a KEY factor in helping kids with developmental delays. A speech issue early in life may be an indication of learning difficulties later in life. My son is doing great in school and has absolutely no speech problems now.

You speak of the kids not enjoying the games and being "bored", Have you thought about the fact that speech is difficult for them? These games are making them work at something that is hard for them so, of course, they will want to reject it. Your job as a parent is to encourage them to try. Once you agree it is boring and dumb they will stop trying....

Trust me as a parent who has been there - you need to do everything you can for these premature kids. They will do great as long as they are given support and encouragement. They will be developmentally behind for a little while, but with your help they will catch up (and even bypass) other kids their age in no time.

[Anonymous]

PP here - I didn't mean to suggest that your therapist is the right one. Having a good connection with your children will be key to having success. If you still don't see progress then definitely get a new therapist. Just don't give up on the therapy just yet.

Also, I agree with the poster who suggested checking with your insurance company. You will need to fight (an unfortunate reality with ANYONE dealing with a dreaded medical insurance company - they go out of their way to deny claims, but that is another thread...). We fought and they finally had to give in and pay - particularly because our DS was premature.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

I like baby babble dvds. I thought those were stupid but they have helped a great deal. Get them on amazon. It seems so dumb but my kid started talking after watching these. He was almost 3 and hardly said a word. After watching one each day he just started talking...not as a 3 year old, but it was a big improvement.

[Anonymous]

OP here - it is true that the twins will avoid difficult activities. If it's too hard or asking too much for them, then they will run and go play somewhere else in the house. BUT, some of the therapists activities were absurd in my opinion. She would have them do all of these complicated art projects when they were 18 months old that my 5 year old could just barely do. Or, we would blow bubbles.....again and again and again. Bubbles are great, but I feel like they need some diversity. I feel like I am constantly giving the therapist ideas of things that the twins would like to do. If it's interesting, then they do not avoid and will play. They have amazing attention spans. I worry about switching therapists since we have gone the past year with the same woman. It's just so different of an experience than when they were in PT. The woman was great. You can tell their speech therapist does not have her own kids yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like baby babble dvds. I thought those were stupid but they have helped a great deal. Get them on amazon. It seems so dumb but my kid started talking after watching these. He was almost 3 and hardly said a word. After watching one each day he just started talking...not as a 3 year old, but it was a big improvement.

OP here - we do Baby Signing Time. They LOVE it. It has helped them way more than anything I have seen from their therapist. Also, our insurance has said "no, no, no" to paying for speech.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like baby babble dvds. I thought those were stupid but they have helped a great deal. Get them on amazon. It seems so dumb but my kid started talking after watching these. He was almost 3 and hardly said a word. After watching one each day he just started talking...not as a 3 year old, but it was a big improvement.

Baby babble is great. The 3rd/newer video is the best. The Preschool Prep and Leap Frog are good too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like baby babble dvds. I thought those were stupid but they have helped a great deal. Get them on amazon. It seems so dumb but my kid started talking after watching these. He was almost 3 and hardly said a word. After watching one each day he just started talking...not as a 3 year old, but it was a big improvement.

OP here - we do Baby Signing Time. They LOVE it. It has helped them way more than anything I have seen from their therapist. Also, our insurance has said "no, no, no" to paying for speech.

Try some of the student run speech clinics. U of MD is wonderful! Much more affordable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - it is true that the twins will avoid difficult activities. If it's too hard or asking too much for them, then they will run and go play somewhere else in the house. BUT, some of the therapists activities were absurd in my opinion. She would have them do all of these complicated art projects when they were 18 months old that my 5 year old could just barely do. Or, we would blow bubbles.....again and again and again. Bubbles are great, but I feel like they need some diversity. I feel like I am constantly giving the therapist ideas of things that the twins would like to do. If it's interesting, then they do not avoid and will play. They have amazing attention spans. I worry about switching therapists since we have gone the past year with the same woman. It's just so different of an experience than when they were in PT. The woman was great. You can tell their speech therapist does not have her own kids yet.

I don't like in-home therapy for this reason and we moved it out of our home and it was much better. We have too many distractions. An office environment worked much better. I don't pay my speech therapist to do bubbles that that is why we left one. Bubbles as a reward is fine but not as the primary therapy. Ours do constant drills and its not fluff anymore. When I watch my 3 year old can easily do an hour and if offered could easily do two hours as he is so engaged. Our speech pathologist does not have her own kids but she will be a great mom when she does. That should not be a requirement. You may want to drop it for the summer and start up again in the fall and try a different therapist. To me, that's a waste of time and we had that happen and I switched. We found there was a window of opportunity and once we hit it, the speech therapy helped. Before that, it was a waste of time. My kid loves his therapists and you can see the difference that relationship makes. I would not bother to keep that up. You can blow bubbles with your kids. You need to be taught specifics as well as have specifics worked with them.

[Anonymous]

Not a sham if at the right age and right therapist. I had a lisp in early years of school. My parents took me to a very strict speech therapist who worked with me @ a year. I was somewhere between 5 and 7. That training was invaluable to me because I spoke well the rest of my life, pronounced words correctly and crisply and was valedictorian several times over. Definitely worth it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, I don't think it is a scam. My child has a severe speech disorder. We get Early Intervention and also pay for private speech. I think you sound like an idiot and your husband is cheap.

Why do I sound like an idiot? And why is my husband cheap? We paid for private speech for our older child because he had some articulation issues. We saw real progress and thought it was great. But, he was 5, not 2. I feel like the speech services for my one and then 2 year olds is an absolute waste of time. I feel like any progress that they have made was simply made because of time, not from getting speech services.

And you know to credit time because studies have shown that Early Intervention is ineffective. Hahahahahaha -- no, they have shown the opposite. You do sound like an idiot x 1000.