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.

Did your 7 month old have an eating or swallowing problem, or was he evaluated for one? Because this likely was done by a SLP.

i think your kid is too young to see the results you are expecting. i 100% felt like you when my twin boys were that age. we started with i&T at 18 months and did the hanen class someone else mentioned. then at age 2 they started with the st. she spent 6 months teaching them to sign the word more. i felt like she was a huge waste. we were just about to request a new st when she announced she was leaving and we would be getting a new one. and we really liked her. my boys speech didnt really kick in for them until age 3 and 3 1/2. by age 4 1/2 one of mine didnt qualify on the restest. he is still delayed but not enough delayed. my other still qualifies at age 6. we have started private for both because frankly my delayed one needs more than he is getting at school and my other one needs to improve for my delayed one to also improve (no other kids so they talk to each other and pick up on each others problem speech). my advice is to stick with it because he qualifies. if you stop and he still needs it later you might have a harder time qualifying. and since you know the county isnt going to pay for your gymboree classes you might as well take advantage of the services you are being offered. also speech in the house was always nonproductive. much better when they received it at preschool. less distractions.

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.

I think speech therapy can be helpful but, as with any therapy, the quality can vary and there may be something else other than (or in addition to) speech issues. I had it as a kid for articulation issues and it helped immensely. Our DS did it for a time, but it turned out that his problems were really related to ADHD, learning disabilities, and selective mutism -- he could never stay focused during the sessions (we used to chalk this up to his being, well, 3-4 years old but eventually learned that there was much more to it than that. Good luck

I think I am going to be the one person here to agree with OP--not that speech therapy is a "sham," because I don't think that's exactly what she was trying to say, but that in very very young children, it's often of limited use or no use at all. My son started speech therapy at around 20 months and frankly, it felt largely like a waste of time until he was about 3. At that point, we really saw a change in his ability to concentrate, to work on articulation (he initially had a significant delay in expressive speech, and later a delay in articulation), and to really benefit from the services provided. DS is now 4 and still in speech therapy but doing great. It's unquestionably helping him at this point. I have real doubts about whether it helped at a younger age, and I don't think this was the fault of the therapists.

Now, I would be wary of making a blanket statement and saying that speech therapy is useless for every single 18-month-old who qualifies. There could be different drivers of the speech delay, and for example, if a child has feeding issues that are a component I think SLPs can work on those at younger ages. And as a pp said, speech delays can be an indicator of broader developmental issues, so there's a potential benefit to being on an SLP's radar who may be watching for those. But a lot of the activities for expressive speech delays, such as blowing bubbles, encouraging different sounds, etc. are really things that parents can easily be trained to do in a session or two.

We have a younger child and have decided that if she seems delayed in speech we are not going to have her assessed as early as we did for DS.

OP here - thank you for all of the kind responses. I'm sorry that I sounded so rude by calling speech a "sham." It just really feels like in our situation that it is a waste of time/money. I have read all kinds of books, I do all the therapists recommendations with the kids all the time. It just seems like the last 6 months or more we just coast through speech sessions and nothing comes out of it. Maybe it's just the age. Like I said before, we saw the changes in our older son when we put him in private speech for articulation issues. We have speech this morning for just TWIN B now. I think that it is just time to get a new therapist.

OP you can also take a break from speech therapy do some play exercises at home and restart again in a few months. I agree with you on the "it feels like a sham" for kids that have mild delays or kids who end up just being late talkers. We had one county speech therapist that wanted to do PROMPT in case DC had apraxia because this is what she was trained in for speech therapy. Our DC had no interest in this and was far too young for apraxia to be diagnosed. We went to a private therapist that did more play based exercised. At first it didn't seem like their was much progress but he enjoyed it. After a few months his speech exploded and he caught up quickly.

The problem with so many therapies now is that there isn't good research or there are a lot of therapies (oral motor exercises for example) that the research studies show don't have any effect. As a parent, you don't want to not do something and find out later on that you should have done it but it leads a good number of people down a path of stress, wasted money and time.

Anonymous wrote:You really want the county to give you 7k for Gymboree bc that's better than therapy?

Of course not, my point was that for all the money that the county is spending on this, it seems like the other activities that we have put our twins in this past year have appeared more valuable in terms of developmental achievement than their speech sessions. I guess that you all that have BTDT know that speech takes time and progress is seen years later.

OP here - thank you for all of the kind responses. I'm sorry that I sounded so rude by calling speech a "sham." It just really feels like in our situation that it is a waste of time/money. I have read all kinds of books, I do all the therapists recommendations with the kids all the time. It just seems like the last 6 months or more we just coast through speech sessions and nothing comes out of it. Maybe it's just the age. Like I said before, we saw the changes in our older son when we put him in private speech for articulation issues. We have speech this morning for just TWIN B now. I think that it is just time to get a new therapist.

UDC offers FREE speech therapy at it's speech and hearing center, GWU costs $50 a session. My son went to GWU for speech starting at 18 months, when he had delayed expressive and receptive language, language of a 9 month old, It was a huge blessing and he recovered.

Definitely contact your insurance and ask for a list of all in network providers. National Rehabilitation Center, Georgetown university and children's hospital all have centers and take most insurance.

Our speech therapist recommended the following books to help me work with our son at home in our normal daily life:

http://www.hanen.org/Guidebooks---DVDs/Parents/It-Takes-Two-to-Talk.aspx.
And
http://www.woodbinehouse.com/main.asp_Q_product_id_E_1-890627-48-8_A_.asp

It can all be a bit overwhelming, but I felt like the hassle of schlepping across town on the metro, paying out of pocket, filing insurance forms myself, re thinking about our interaction and how I talk to him to encourage verbal responses paid off in the end, when he was in kindergarten and having a problem with reading (there is a correlation between delayed language and difficultly learning to read) and his kindergarten teacher was shocked to learn that my (now) highly verbal and very articulate child had delayed language.

Hang in there.

OP,

If money is tight, there are several speech pathology programs in this area that offer lower cost clinic services as well as conduct research studies where screening and services are free:

UMD: http://hesp.umd.edu/landing/Clinic

GW: http://departments.columbian.gwu.edu/speechhearing/

Howard University: http://www.gs.howard.edu/graduateprograms/communicationsciences.html

GMU: http://departments.columbian.gwu.edu/speechhearing/graduate

You can also search NIH for a clinical trial.

So you have zero excuses for getting your kids help.

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.

Please don't turn this forum into all the other forums. Be kind to OP please. We have ALL been there where we wonder if the various therapies we are using are helping or a complete waste of time and money, so easy does it PP.

OP - having a child who needs therapy isn't cheap but as I have learned - in my seasoned 47 yrs - no one with kids gets out for free. Find a well-regarded speech therapist and keep at it!

Shut it PP, OP does sound completely uninformed--hence an idiot. Stop with your whining, chiming in.

You really want the county to give you 7k for Gymboree bc that's better than therapy?

OP -- I don't think people should be calling you an idiot. I have a significantly speech impaired child who has been in ST for years. There was a period where ST helped tremendously. But my child has other things going on and for the past year, I have often felt our speech sessions are a waste of time, and wondered what they are actually doing, and why I'm spending the money on it.

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.

Please don't turn this forum into all the other forums. Be kind to OP please. We have ALL been there where we wonder if the various therapies we are using are helping or a complete waste of time and money, so easy does it PP.

OP - having a child who needs therapy isn't cheap but as I have learned - in my seasoned 47 yrs - no one with kids gets out for free. Find a well-regarded speech therapist and keep at it!

Here's my take, and my take on many such posts, and it comes from having a severely speech delayed child and assessing my own expectations of speech therapy.

You start out by discussing your PT experience and how your child/children "caught up nicely." You therefore went into speech therapy with the same expectation -- speech therapy would result in your child catching up and speaking normally. But speech is not a skill that is analogous with physical skills and children do not go from no speech to perfect speech in a few months the way they go from a few physical delays to "catching up nicely."

OP, if your child has significant speech delays he may never speak perfectly. Ever. That's the truth. And that has nothing to do with ST being a sham. He may have speech issues that are irremediable. Speech is controlled by muscles. It is not an act of will and a talent or skill that a speech therapist elicits from the child. The speech therapist cannot make your child speak. It is not a reflection of her that your child cannot speak perfectly.

Furthermore, your child's speech reflects on YOU, OP. Speech has to be practiced EVERY SINGLE DAY. Unlike motor skills, which a child has every incentive to practice on her own, she will not practice her B's, P's, T's, etc. 10 times a day. YOU HAVE TO DO THIS WITH HER. To do the homework every day. I suspect you do not. I know I don't. I don't have time. And it's like practicing piano scales. It's boring, no fun, and the child hates it.

So I think you also need to look within.