speech delay and preschool

[Anonymous]

If your child has a speech delay, did you enroll him/her in preschool? Or wait until K?

[Anonymous]

My DS was slightly speech delayed - 15/16 months.
He started pre-school when he was 2yrs old, just two half days per week.

No way would I wait till K. They need to hear other children speaking, and need to be in a stimulating environment where many different people are speaking - so they hear both adult and children's language.

[Anonymous]

PS - he's now 8. Has some articulation and pragmatic speech issues. So he's in speech therapy twice per week.
And when he was 2yrs old, Child Find came to the house to work with him as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DS was slightly speech delayed - 15/16 months.
He started pre-school when he was 2yrs old, just two half days per week.

No way would I wait till K. They need to hear other children speaking, and need to be in a stimulating environment where many different people are speaking - so they hear both adult and children's language.

I agree. I had one with a significant delay and another with a moderate delay. They were in a very good in-home family day care and thrived. The one with a significant delay also went to a special ed preschool. There are many benefits to being around other kids and adults.

[Anonymous]

Definitely enroll. Our 3.5 year old with pragmatic speech delay has made a lot of strides in his speech and behavior since he started preschool. He still struggles, but even the nonverbal exchanges he has with other kids seems to be laying the foundation for him to interact better. Also, Child Find and the preschool have worked well together to build what the special educator is doing with him into the rest of the classroom since the other kids seem to enjoy/benefit from the visual schedule and other accomodations they've developed for him.

[Anonymous]

Have you heard of LEAP preschool at the UofMd? It's a preschool that is for kids with speech delays. My son went there for 2 years and it is absolutely AMAZING!!!

[Anonymous]

My son had a pretty big speech delay. I decided to keep him home until he turned 3 but it was a decision based on his personality rather than his delay. It worked out well for him because we focused on speech for a year then added preschool. He is in a preschool with an inclusion program. My second child is far more independent and has a far more serious speech delay but will be going to a 2s program. It really depends on the child. You may also want to discuss this with your dc's speech therapist.

[Anonymous]

Preschool. My DS's speech delay was so significant that he was unintelligible until he was about 6 years old. At that point, we learned that his mouth had never properly developed and we started a new type of therapy, which led to significant improvements. So, he went through all of preschool and most of pre-K with no one understanding a word that he said. But, he took it all in and is doing fine now. I'm glad I did it because given his speech delays, I would have hated for him to be delayed in any other way when it came to school.

[Anonymous]

If you keep your child home until K, your child will be one of the only ones who didn't get preschool by the time he gets to K. There is a reason for preschool for typical and delayed kids.

[Anonymous]

We'll be starting this fall at 2 years old for a 3 day/week program. DS is now 20 months and is in ST. His ST and dev ped highly recommend preschool--but it has to be the right fit. If you do it, you want a fairly structured program and a high adult ratio.

[Anonymous]

We put our speech-delayed 2 year-old DD into preschool two mornings a week. She had 16 words when she started (at 26 months) and now (at 32 months) she has well over 1,000 words and 4-5 word sentences (much to our complete SHOCK). I'm not saying that preschool itself was totally responsible but it sure didn't hurt! Also, I was amazed at how many kids in her class were similarly speech delayed. Some of the parents didn't even think much of the fact that their two year-olds only had a word or two. And those kids are speaking more now too. So the bottom line is that your DC will probably not be alone in his/her speech delay and will possibly see improvements in speech due to all the social interaction.

Here's the other advantage of preschool when it comes to speech delay. I don't know about your DC, but I think my DD was starting to almost tune me out. I was so attuned to her needs that she didn't NEED to communicate to get what she needed/wanted. At school, she had an incentive to use her words.

[Anonymous]

OP what did you decide?

[Anonymous]

My son said about 10 words at 24 months and was not putting words together. It's now 7 months later and he's speaking in short sentences a lot of the time. I attribute this to speech therapy (he's still pretty unintelligible though) and being in a full-day preschool. He has benefited greatly from all the experiences he's been having, not just speech and listening but gross and fine motor as well. I think he's improved much more rapidly than he would have if he'd just been home with me.