The rule of thumb is to get him speech therapy if it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Won’t hurt, might help!

public schools have much lower standards and during pandemic CDC also dropped or lowered some of speech milestones standards. The teacher is doing you a great favor by mentioning it, because she doesnt have to. What you do with that info is entirely up to you.

Yes, even in family daycares the provider does assessments of kids all ages every 6 months at least and show the kids development and concerns to parents. They mostly follow the free cdcd assessment evaluation

Anonymous wrote:Trust the teacher's and schools. They don't get paid much but they studied and know better than us parents.

Follow thier advice and get a doctor for your kids

Yep. So many parents realize there are issues late because no one wants to say anything. Get an eval. There is no downside.

Anonymous wrote:Also, didn't mean to sound classist by adding the info about title 1 etc...for reference I am low income. Though I have a college degree etc so I would think I've been able to give him whatever I could as far as a head start in speech.

It sounds as if you’re pointing out here that you’re broke and might face a struggle even to get your son evaluated, let alone to get sessions with a qualified speech therapist.

Other people seem to assume that you have lots of money.

I think that you should try to get your son evaluated, partly to see if a hearing issue or other obvious physical issue and could be treated with medical insurance benefits.

If you need regular speech therapy and can’t afford it, maybe there’s be some way to get it for a lower price online. Or maybe you could find out what the evaluator says your son specifically needs and figure out a way to provide that yourself. Or, come here and ask people how to get what your son needs affordable once you know what he needs.

Of course you should get a speech evaluation at the teacher's recommendation. I can't think of a single reason why you shouldn't. Either the kid needs speech therapy and the teacher was a great professional to catch it and alert you or the kid doesn't need it and you'll have the peace of mind that you cared enough about this development that you got the eval done.

Trust the teacher's and schools. They don't get paid much but they studied and know better than us parents.

Follow thier advice and get a doctor for your kids

There is no harm in an eval. We got my son evaluated when we thought he was behind and he didn’t qualify for services. The evaluation said he was on “the slower end of normal.” We ended up paying out of pocket for 2 months of weekly speech therapy anyway and his language exploded. He likely would have been fine without the therapy but it didn’t harm him and gave us good strategies to support him.

PP I forgot to mention that if your are concerned seek out an SLP to screen or evaluate.

The "r" isn't typically developed until 5+. if you can understand him I wouldn't worry too much this. I wonder about the opinion about any preschool program that makes doing workbooks a part of the daily schedule. This does not sound like a developmental, playbased preschool.

- a speech therapist

Anonymous wrote:It would not hurt to get him evaluated. Don’t judge his speech based on what you can understand because parents (almost) always understand their kids.

+1

Also, why is he doing worksheets in preschool?

https://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/speech-sound-disorders/

Here are some of the milestones to look for. If anything seems off, look into it. But there's a wide range of normal and he definitely doesn't have to say r correctly by 4.

I agree with others when a teacher flags something, you generally want to be so grateful that they were skilled enough to notice and brave enough to tell you. Not all teachers are for better or worse. It never hurts to have an evaluation and if a teacher recommends it I would absolutely not hesitate.

You mentioned how smart he is, being smart and having articulation issues have nothing to do with each other. I’m sure he’s very bright! But as others have said, you and your family being able to understand him isn’t really relevant.

Also if you do the assessment and they say he doesn’t need it then you didn’t lose anything. Are you in Virginia? In VA you should able to be assessed for free through Child Find. If you are in another state they have the same program it just may be called something different.

OP, of course you understand your child. You and the people around the child have been conditioned to the oddities of speech.
When an outsider mentions it, take it seriously.

I thought my child's speech was fine too, but someone mentioned that certain sounds were funny. After a few sessions with a speech therapist, it was discovered that my child had a submucuous cleft - invisible unless one sticks a scope down her throat. This required surgery to correct. She could not enunciate certain consonants that require closure of the upper palate - g, some s sounds. Spongebob would be enunciated as 'pongebob'. Girl was sounded out as 'nurl'.
Of all the ENT doctors my child saw, only none of them took it seriously until the speech therapist (who was REALLY good), pointed me to an ENT dr. who was knowledgeable about this condition which then led us to cleft palate teams at hospitals.

Only you can get your child any help they need. Don't ignore it or get defensive when someone makes an observation that something is amiss.

I think the public school screenings do a disservice in some ways because just because the child doesn't qualify for special education, doesn't mean they don't need support.

I think if the teacher is noticing issues you need to evaluate further privately. Unfortunately that process is not straightforward or easy.