Too soon to see a major difference in speech?
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Anonymous
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My son had severe fluid in his ears starting probably as an infant through getting tubes at age 3.5. By the time he had the tubes, his hearing was at 50%. At around 2.5 he had speech eval and failed the articulation component. He hit his "quantity" of speech milestones on time, but not by much (ie. if he was supposed to have 100 words by age 2, he had that but not much more), and has never been a super chatty kid. Of the 6 boys in his preschool class, one is super chatty, one doesn't talk at all, and my son and the other three are in the middle -- though my son on the quieter end.
We started speech immediately after the tubes got put in in april this year. The therapist identified his speech is lessened by a global lisp caused by weak mouth muscles. So he was already making all the age appropriate sounds -- but they were all inarticulate because of his weak muscles. He's definitely become a lot more verbal since we started therapy, and i'd say his articulation is improving too. He also stopped drooling (related to floppy lips) But i'm assuming he would have improved no matter what because (a) he has 100% hearing now and (b) he's getting older, so all these things improve with age. I keep reading about other people's experiences with speech therapy and how it made such an amazing difference in a short amount of time. It's been 3.5 months and i don't see any major differences. Thoughts on whether this is a normal experience? How long we'll expect to be doing the therapy? |
Anonymous
| A lot of speech therapy stories people tell are about minor articulation issues, not about a child dealing with recovering from hearing loss and dysarthria. If you're concerned about his progress, ask his slp about what kindof timeline she is looking at, or just get a second slp opinion for some clarification. |
Anonymous
| Our progress took years. If it took a few months, it was probably happening more naturally and would have happened regardless of therapy. He's doing great. |
Anonymous
| Ours took years as well. I agree with pp before, those stories are likely minor speech issues and articulation alone is a tricky one when dealing with weak mouth muscles. In my experience it takes quite a while to build those muscles up. If you are seeing any difference after 3.5 months I would be thrilled! Keep at it! |
Anonymous
+1. My DC had different underlying issues, but was in speech for years (+8). It can be very slow and progress depends on many factors. |
Anonymous
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For our daughter, we were in speech for about 8 years, too, year-round but she has a disability and speech had to be developed in terms of fluency and articulation. Do not expect results overnight, and remember you are very fortunate that you have gotten you son's hearing to improve so much and that he does not have cognitive skill limitations. From your post, I would be sure that you have a speech therapist who is also tuned into working on building up his low tone oral muscles. I remember one thing recommended to us was to use a straw. Perhaps there are also oral mouth exercises that can be practiced - not sure. And then there may be positive reminder cues that you can be taught to share with your child such as to slow down or focus on the articulation. |
Anonymous
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My son's been in speech for 5 years so far, and yet I'm also one of the moms who will post how he improved SO much once we started therapy. It's a long, slow slog, but I'm constantly amazed at how far he's come. (It's just like parenting little kids in general, right, some days you feel like you've been at this forever and then you blink and they're in school.)
Really, 3.5 months is such a short amount of time. If you're happy with the report he and the therapist have and you're seeing progress, it sounds like all is going well. |