Can someone walk me through or put me in the right direction for speech therapy?

[extendedforecast]

My kids are in need of speech therapy. One has a tongue tie and cannot pronounce l's. The other has trouble with l and r. I was told my multiple people to wait and see. At this point, I feel they need professional help. How does one go through the public school system for help? My daughter is still learning to read and may be considered behind. Will this reflect badly on our homeschool to the point they might to intervene? Sorry if my questions are silly. I realize my fears may be irrational.

[ElizabethB]

It varies by state, and even school and district.  I would call the local school and find out.

 

L and R are complex sounds.  On your own, you can work with them with the sounds of speech app/website while you are waiting.  My remedial students have been helped seeing how they are supposed to be made, although this won't help much for the child with the tongue tie.

 

http://soundsofspeech.uiowa.edu/index.html#english

 

:grouphug:

 

 

Edited October 3, 2017 by ElizabethB

[gingersmom]

When I did it many many years ago it was through the board of education. By law they had to do requested testing within a certain number of days (I think I was around 30). I would google for the laws for your state so you will have an idea of what your rights are.

[OrganicJen]

You need to just call the district. Most districts just have you make an appointment with the SLP and you can just go in for testing and treatment. It's usually pretry easy.

[PeterPan]

Getting evals through the ps is a *federal* right and won't vary by state. I understand your concerns, and there's a sense in which you can't help it. I'm a pretty good homeschooler, you're probably a pretty good homeschooler. When I go into the ps for evals, they get their feathers ruffled because they don't understand why I don't put my kid in there. They're passionate about what they do and it's kind of personal to them. So even if you do a good job, you're an oddity and incomprehensible to them, kwim? 

 

But really, the main thing is, know you're complying with the state homeschool laws. If you're complying with your state's laws, proceed forward with evals and don't blink an eye. I think it's AWESOME that you're pursuing evals. The sad thing is when people wait a long time. That's when eyebrows get raised. But when you go in with your kids, they're probably going to be thinking ok, this is good, the parent is pro-active, the parent cares, and it will be good. 

 

Have you checked your state's laws? The ps is required, by federal law, to identify students with disabilities, BUT they are NOT required by federal law to provide services. That is decided by state law and totally varies by state. You should also consider that ps speech therapy is sometimes going to be very brief and inconvenient. For instance, iirc my ds' IEP (yes, he has one) says 1 hour a month of speech therapy. For SEVERE APRAXIA and language problems my ds was given one hour a month. So that's not worth your time, even if the state requires your ps to provide services. It's just ridiculous.

 

The way speech evals work, they usually kind of roll things, doing a little bit of testing, just enough to get your qualified, and then they do more testing as they progress through therapy sessions. That allows them to find more things. They don't necessarily just sit there doing 10 hours of testing upfront, kwim? They have a quickie battery and then more and more. So anyways, the SLP (ps, private) can look at articulation. If you can get your insurance to cover private speech therapy, you will likely get more service, more normal sessions. If you're going through the eval process anyway, might as well be building that relationship with the person you want to stick with. Also the ps SLP will be determining if the issue is so significant that it affects the dc's ability to access his education and how it relates to norms for the age. There usually has to be 1.5-2 standard deviations of discrepancy on testing for them to bother to intervene. In other words, they'll let articulation problems go untreated longer than private will, because the ps is saving money. Now hopefully they won't do that to you, but they can! The SLPs have some flex, but it happened. So we were told things like oh we wouldn't normally treat (in the ps) for that sound missing at that age, but because he has apraxia and we know it's not going to come in without therapy, we'll qualify him.

 

In other words, the ps eval even won't tell you what needs to be done, only what they're being forced to admit and qualify him for.

 

A basic, one hour, first meeting kind of SLP eval is usually not too expensive, especially if you tell them you don't care about a written report.

 

Your state dept of education website will have info on the IEP process, state laws, the timeline, everything.

[Crimson Wife]

First thing I would recommend is seeing an ENT to have the frenulectomy. Don't let people (even general pediatricians) tell you that the tongue-tie is fine and doesn't need to be clipped. All 3 of my kids had tongue-tie and the frenulectomy is a very minor procedure that takes all of about 30 seconds with hardly any blood. The Novocaine injection was worse than the actual clipping.

 

If /l/ and /r/ are the only speech or language issues, be forewarned that your kids may not qualify for services through the schools at this point. According to my developmental phonology textbook, the "age of mastery" for both /l/ and /r/ is 7.5. So the kindergartner would still be within developmental norms and the 2nd grader might be as well depending on when his/her birthday is.

 

Do you have coverage for private speech therapy through your health insurance? Private SLP's tend not to be as rigid in looking at those age charts as school-based SLP's are required to be. My DS fell into the 25th percentile for articulation when he was a toddler & preschooler and was able to qualify for private speech therapy even though he didn't qualify for school-based services.

[PeterPan]

Bingo. My ds didn't have L and R at 7 and 8 and the only reason they qualified him was because of the apraxia, like they were being generous.

[boscopup]

People need to stop saying wait and see with speech therapy. NO speech therapist will tell you to wait and see. They will all say they want to see that child as soon as a problem is identified, because it's easier to fix it earlier than later when bad habits are formed! I had a ped even say to wait until age 5 and let the school system take care of it then. NO. I'm glad I switched doctors and that I got that kid started while still 3. We went through the school system. They have to test your kid and determine eligibility. If your child is school aged, they don't have to provide services in some states (mine included). But while my son was preschool age, we went to speech therapy at the local school each week, and he did very well. We finished up later via private speech therapy. My insurance covered up to 30 visits at that point (now I could get unlimited because he has an autism diagnosis, but that's a recent change).

 

I have never had any issues with the school system and my homeschooling, even with this child who was a later reader. They could tell he was being read to and talked to and such. They just simply said that once he was school age, he had to enroll in order to get services. I was still given the choice to continue homeschooling and not get services (which is what we did).

 

It would be worth getting your kids checked out, for your peace of mind. If other people have a hard time understanding them, that will help towards qualifying them for speech. And if they don't qualify, that's fine too. At least you'll know, right?

[Crimson Wife]

 

 

People need to stop saying wait and see with speech therapy. NO speech therapist will tell you to wait and see.

Actually that is not exactly true. In my Communicative Disorders coursework, I had a lot of labs where I had to watch videos of speech and language evaluations and then score the results according to the manual. If the child scored within typical limits (16th percentile or above) the correct answer for the report was “follow up in 6-12 months if the parent still has concernsâ€. Six months for younger children and twelve for school aged ones.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Edited October 4, 2017 by Crimson Wife

[homemommy83]

We recently had my son evaluated for speech therapy through the public school, and it has been a blessing.  We just called the school and asked what they wanted us to do to be evaluated.  They had us come in for a "soft check" and to fill out forms, then they called us in for an evaluation with the speech pathologist, then they set up an IEP for him.  The speech pathologist is fabulous, and I am thrilled to get to work with her.  My son tested at .3%, yes less than the 1%, (he has a severe phonological disorder/apraxia) and the school only offered him 20 minutes weekly.  She actually moved around her schedule to get him in an extra day, and we are paying her for an additional full session; she is truly amazing.  So now he is going 3 days week.

 

I do think they will want him to enroll in K when the time comes, but we will just continue with her independently instead.

 

In regards to the reading, many children read later and it can be normal, but there also could be an underlying disability in addition to speech and the schools are usually good about testing for both language and speech concurrently. If any issue is found they will be able to give a diagnosis, which helps in knowing how to proceed in your education plan for your child. 

 

May God Bless you in your endeavors in helping your little one.

 

Brenda

[J-rap]

For my dd, I first contacted the school, and then the principal set up a meeting with himself, my dh and me, the speech therapist, and the school audiologist (because in my dd's case the root cause was a hearing problem).  Then they were able to give her an IEP (I think that's what it's called!), which was necessary to begin the twice/week speech therapy.

[PeterPan]

Brenda, your experience is like ours, with nice ps SLPs but minimal time in the IEP through the school. If you're paying for it, you really want to look into PROMPT. Sometimes the school will actually have someone trained in it. 

[homemommy83]

Our speech therapist is taking classes that will help her with him specifically, she is truly amazing.  She is using finger cues with him, and she had him adding ending sounds the very first visit!  The only Prompt teacher is an hour away, and would be way out of our low income budget (until at least tax refunds next year). He is extremely intelligent, his struggle is totally with verbal expression, so he is responding very well to her hand cues.  A year ago he was only grunting, and his vowels were extremely distorted.  We used Super Star Speech for home evaluations as he was "too old for early intervention by the time they called us back 4 months later", and the public school didn't get back with us until August this year. He just had his 2nd appointment today, and she already has him adding ending sounds with the hand cues.  We worked so hard with him, and although his percentile is very low, he really has made great progress.  He now says a lot of words, always missing ending sounds, sometimes beginning, and a lot of the middle is distorted, but I can figure about 30% of what he says now instead of 0%.  His teacher is extremely motivated to help him, and she is doing one extra lesson weekly for free and charging me extremely low for the other class.  I just so thankful for her.

 

Brenda

 

Edited October 4, 2017 by homemommy83