Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:LEAP is the only true speech preschool outside what the counties offer. We did two years. It was beneficial for my child and the program worked perfectly for us. We did LEAP and supplemented with private. Some families did LEAP and public. Some did LEAP and private and some just did LEAP.

Very few preschools from what I found are open to speech delayed kids the older they get.

We live in DC, so preschool at age 3 is free- if we choose to attend. Would love to find private schools as a back up.

That's absolutely not true. It offers individual speech during the day as does Dolley Madison. The MANSEF schools probably do as well.

Offering individual speech and a preschool specifically catering to speech delayed kids with 30 minutes of individual speech and daily programing for speech is very different.

1. LEAP only has ST 3 days a week and 2. you can get ST multiple times a week at several preschools including MANSEF, Dolley Madison, and pretty much any preschool that has a SLP on staff. Also, if you get services through the county, they often go to preschools. You can also get speech through public preschools.

Preschools can be open to having speech delayed kids, you were just researching the wrong kinds of preschools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:some folks here have discussed seeing Dr Camarata for evaluations. A big commitment, but might be worth exploring or to keep in your back pocket.

and just hang in there. While DD was not as profoundly affected as your child is at age 2.5, she had no words at 18 months, and only a handful at 2 and it was really hard to understand her. She's now 3.5 and is something like the 90th for expressive, although she still has a lot of pronunciation issues. We go to building blocks therapy.

We saw him. He was good. The other speech pathologist who wrote the report was terrible. Absolutely not worth the trip. He understood our child, she did not. Her report was just a bunch of test scores, no diagnosis, recommendations or anything else. It was shocking a professional wrote it. We reached out to him several times to get a better report so we could use it at school and other situations and he blew us off just offering a conversation over the phone (not helpful for what we needed). He clearly gets these kids, but without a report, the evaluation is useless. I'd probably go see his wife instead. He's just too busy to be bothered with any details and those he relies on to assist are not able to do what he can do.

That doesn't sound good. We've actually seen the Camaratas several times. Getting the report is definitely the hard part. But we started seeing Mary though the Late Talking Clinic, and she spent about 5 hours with us each time we went. Some testing, but lots of followup. I taped the conversations and took lots of notes. The reports had lots of good detail in them.


OP 2 is WAY, Way, WAY too soon to give up on language. Most of my son's language came in after he was 9 years old. He is still gaining language as a teenager.

The Hanen Book was great, as is Dr. Jim MacDonald's Communicating Partners website.

Mary does her own work. Dr. Camarata does most of the testing but had another speech pathologist in the room who did some testing and she was terrible - she did not get what my child was saying and her reframing made no sense. We got a report after asking many times but it had only test scores - no narrative or recommendations. It was useless for what we needed. He was helpful in talking to him but he said our child was progressing well, we had the right services in place and saw no need to recommend or change anything. If we had gone a few years ago the testing would have been far more helpful as he didn't tell us anything we didn't know. We really needed one thing in writing.

A speech delayed child at 2 like this poster is saying is no big deal. Our child didn't start till 4, and is doing very well but still struggles a little at 6.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:some folks here have discussed seeing Dr Camarata for evaluations. A big commitment, but might be worth exploring or to keep in your back pocket.

and just hang in there. While DD was not as profoundly affected as your child is at age 2.5, she had no words at 18 months, and only a handful at 2 and it was really hard to understand her. She's now 3.5 and is something like the 90th for expressive, although she still has a lot of pronunciation issues. We go to building blocks therapy.

We saw him. He was good. The other speech pathologist who wrote the report was terrible. Absolutely not worth the trip. He understood our child, she did not. Her report was just a bunch of test scores, no diagnosis, recommendations or anything else. It was shocking a professional wrote it. We reached out to him several times to get a better report so we could use it at school and other situations and he blew us off just offering a conversation over the phone (not helpful for what we needed). He clearly gets these kids, but without a report, the evaluation is useless. I'd probably go see his wife instead. He's just too busy to be bothered with any details and those he relies on to assist are not able to do what he can do.

That doesn't sound good. We've actually seen the Camaratas several times. Getting the report is definitely the hard part. But we started seeing Mary though the Late Talking Clinic, and she spent about 5 hours with us each time we went. Some testing, but lots of followup. I taped the conversations and took lots of notes. The reports had lots of good detail in them.


OP 2 is WAY, Way, WAY too soon to give up on language. Most of my son's language came in after he was 9 years old. He is still gaining language as a teenager.

The Hanen Book was great, as is Dr. Jim MacDonald's Communicating Partners website.

OP -
On your question of when to move to 'non-verbal' - use what ever terminology works now. And know that it may or may not change.

When my son was 2-3 years old we called him nonverbal. Because it was true, he could not communicate in a meaningful way verbally. And when you are talking to doctors, caregivers, etc it describes what he is.

But that was not forever for my son. He moved to a limited vocabulary, and now just has a few remaining pragmatic issues. Now we often refer to the fact that he was speech delayed and needs speech support. It's good to remember that a label is not forever.

The most important thing for these kids is to focus on where they are and what they need now. Be aware of what they may need if they make minimal progress, be aware of what they may need if they make great leaps. It's exhausting, but then you're always ready for whatever comes next.

Anonymous wrote:some folks here have discussed seeing Dr Camarata for evaluations. A big commitment, but might be worth exploring or to keep in your back pocket.

and just hang in there. While DD was not as profoundly affected as your child is at age 2.5, she had no words at 18 months, and only a handful at 2 and it was really hard to understand her. She's now 3.5 and is something like the 90th for expressive, although she still has a lot of pronunciation issues. We go to building blocks therapy.

We saw him. He was good. The other speech pathologist who wrote the report was terrible. Absolutely not worth the trip. He understood our child, she did not. Her report was just a bunch of test scores, no diagnosis, recommendations or anything else. It was shocking a professional wrote it. We reached out to him several times to get a better report so we could use it at school and other situations and he blew us off just offering a conversation over the phone (not helpful for what we needed). He clearly gets these kids, but without a report, the evaluation is useless. I'd probably go see his wife instead. He's just too busy to be bothered with any details and those he relies on to assist are not able to do what he can do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:LEAP is the only true speech preschool outside what the counties offer. We did two years. It was beneficial for my child and the program worked perfectly for us. We did LEAP and supplemented with private. Some families did LEAP and public. Some did LEAP and private and some just did LEAP.

Very few preschools from what I found are open to speech delayed kids the older they get.

We live in DC, so preschool at age 3 is free- if we choose to attend. Would love to find private schools as a back up.

That's absolutely not true. It offers individual speech during the day as does Dolley Madison. The MANSEF schools probably do as well.

Offering individual speech and a preschool specifically catering to speech delayed kids with 30 minutes of individual speech and daily programing for speech is very different.