Anyone else think that speech therapy is a sham?

[Anonymous]

Speech is not a sham. It was a complete game changer for our son who started at 20 months and continued until 7. It was hard work and he had multiple sessions a week. EI provided subpar therapy but fortunately we were able to afford to supplement. The key is to find a GOOD speech therapist who provides treatment that is appropriate to the diagnosis and to apply what is learned in therapy between sessions at home. My son has crystal clear speech now. People who meet him today don't have a clue that he was nonverbal at until 3 and almost completely unintelligible until 5.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - for those of you who had a child in speech at age 1 or 2, what was it like? I'm wondering if we just don't have a good SLP. My twins "like" her now, but they are bored most of the session and don't do most of the "play." They run away from her and avoid having to do most things. I find most of the games and play very boring as well.

I prefer Verbal ABA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here - for those of you who had a child in speech at age 1 or 2, what was it like? I'm wondering if we just don't have a good SLP. My twins "like" her now, but they are bored most of the session and don't do most of the "play." They run away from her and avoid having to do most things. I find most of the games and play very boring as well.

I prefer Verbal ABA

We tried ABA and speech. Speech therapy was much better. The ABA therapist was sweet but her style as she was not trained in speech was very simplistic and really not helpful. Speech was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here - for those of you who had a child in speech at age 1 or 2, what was it like? I'm wondering if we just don't have a good SLP. My twins "like" her now, but they are bored most of the session and don't do most of the "play." They run away from her and avoid having to do most things. I find most of the games and play very boring as well.

I prefer Verbal ABA

Your twins are running away because of their speech delay. The therapist must be super engaging and bring good energy. I think you may need a new SLP. A good SLP was life changing for our 1 1/2 year old. Still in speech at age 3 but has blown everyone away with the progress he has made.

[Anonymous]

We did speech therapy for my child who had language disorder. We did it for 10 years and her language test scores did not go up any after all those years, so I think it is a waste of time and money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It can be a sham because when my 7 month old was in the hospital we got billed for speech therapy services. Really? A 7 month old? GTFOH. Now I don't trust any of it and I have a bad impression of the usefulness of speech therapists.

The speech therapist in the hospital is the one who diagnosed my 6 month old with silent aspiration which allowed us to figure out what was causing his recurrent pneumonia and act before he permanent damaged his lungs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We did speech therapy for my child who had language disorder. We did it for 10 years and her language test scores did not go up any after all those years, so I think it is a waste of time and money.

Maybe you had the wrong therapists or you only did school therapies which are pretty bad. Speech therapy cannot cure or fix a child. They give them the tools they need to be successful. Not all kids will benefit depending on the type of disorder. It greatly helped mine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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 a

SPEECGH IS STUPID

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We did speech therapy for my child who had language disorder. We did it for 10 years and her language test scores did not go up any after all those years, so I think it is a waste of time and money.

If her test scores did not go up that is expected. The demands increase. If she were not making any progress, you would see a big drop in scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We did speech therapy for my child who had language disorder. We did it for 10 years and her language test scores did not go up any after all those years, so I think it is a waste of time and money.

If her test scores did not go up that is expected. The demands increase. If she were not making any progress, you would see a big drop in scores.

Old thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's a sham, but I did feel like therapy for stuttering was not super effective. Partly this is because stuttering is not that common and not the bread and butter of most SLPs (and we had VERY mixed luck on getting SLPs who were good in this area). We did it for years. I am still on the fence as to whether it was that helpful.

I am an adult stutterer and I have had useless SLPs but I have had a couple awesome SLPs over my lifetime who have taught me tricks to use that I still use to this day. Again like many have said, depends on the therapist and their knowledge base (like any profession)

[Anonymous]

I don't think it's a sham, but some are better than others. Our EI ST was OK, but nothing special. Inclusive preschool helped and the ST was good, not amazing, but good. We supplemented with a pushy private PT. Sometimes she pushed too hard which was frustrating, but she often pushed just hard enough to get more rapid growth.

I will say playdates with NT children sparked a lot of growth both in social skills and verbal. Plus, they made my kiddo so happy (though anxious when the playdate started).

[Anonymous]

Most valuable money ever spent on our child.

[Anonymous]

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.

+1
A little blunter than I would have said it but this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I have a severely speech delayed child with MERLD, and in my long experience (child is now 11), speech therapy can be a waste of time IF the therapist isn't doing a child-led therapy and focusing on your child's individual needs. Too often they are doing a one-size fits all therapy, and not really looking at a child's underlying issues, hence the lack of progress. Is your child's issues truly motor based, or something else, like receptive language? That makes a difference.

We were in Florida when my son was 2, and his therapy, paid for by the state, was twice a week in a therapist's private office. It was great, as he went from a handful of words to almost 100 in a year. He easily picked up nouns. Then we moved, and he started getting therapy through the school system, and we found very, very little progress there. It WAS a waste of time and a "sham" if you will. Unfortunately, it seems like many school based programs and EI are this way indeed.

So we went private, my son was (wrongly) was diagnosed with apraxia, and the (very nice) therapist started these sessions where she basically chased my child around and tried to get him to do what she wanted. She was not very successful. This went on for a year, before we decided to make the trip to Nashville and see Dr. Stephen Camarata. And boy was that eye-opening! And absolutely life-changing.

Dr. Camarata immediately told us our child's receptive language was so low, he had no idea what we were saying. We were way overtalking him. (The right utterance level is one word plus their current level of speech. If they are saying car, you say "Red car?") His wife Mary sent us home with a detailed plan of how to increase our child's language (we also got a normalization rate, which seems about right on target).


AND they watched a tape of our current speech therapy sessions, and told us it was a total waste of time. Mary Camarata also told us how to fix it. Luckily for us, the therapist listened to her advice, and the therapy sessions changed overnight. It was amazing to me that she had a masters and yet was still not trained in child-led speech therapy. Even the therapist was surprised at the change and the level of work she was able to get out of him when she met him as his level. We did continue a few years more, but stopped when my son hit about 2nd grade. He was exhausted after school and wasn't progressing with her anymore. We now focus on academics instead of speech, because his speech is coming in naturally.

OP, take a look at Dr. James McDonald Communicating Partners website and Hanen's "It Takes to to Talk." The truth is , parents are often the child's best therapists. You spend the most time with them!

Agree. Also in our case, my child did not like the approach of the majority of speech therapists. Most are very loud, talkative, and bubbly. All of that extroverted energy makes my DD shut down. Too many of them pegged her intellectually disability to be moderate when it is fairly mild and my daughter was annoyed. I tried to gently sway them to change their approach. Finally, I pulled her out of ST until I found a low key guy who usually worked with adults. He figured out quickly what her intellect level was because he didn’t just launch into one approach. He tried modulating his voice until he found the tone she would respond to. She ended up crushing on him at 6 y/o because I think she felt like he really “saw” to her for who she is. He is so much easier for me to to work with too. She has made good progress over the past two years with him. So it can also be personalities.