from our indirect experience in children with low tone the SLP does the feeding therapy. There are some specialized in this and in oro motor exercises and disorders versus language disorders.

Dear board members, I am fairly new, I joined knowing only that my child has a severe speech issue, possibly a processing one, we also knew we have a connective tissue disorder but we did not know what is going on and how to help her. Down the path of processing I have started horse riding, the iLS and just very recently looked at ABA-VB speech therapy stuff. This was mostly just an intuition on my side, then we found a good OT specilized in sensory integration and things got moving. The fantastic book THE MISLABELED CHILD is shedding all the light I needed to continue in my search but might not have a lot of therapy ideas. There is a communication gap chapter that describes my child to a T and also explains how these kids are then later labeled as mentally retarded...can you believe it? I cannot, I really cannot comprehend how doctors and therapists cannot figure this out in time and condamn our children...I am so shell shocked and a nervous wreck, I just hope that I am catching this in time. According to this book I might have as I should be able to lessen the effects of this abnormal development (which I am pretty positive now it is linked to the CTD)from what we have been seeing. Also they quote fairly quick responses to the right therapy. Anyhow, the book is giving me hopes and also explaining why everything we are doing right now is having these amazing effects (basically they suggest horses, swimming, sensory integration and a lot of 1-1 speech therapy based on simplified commands and teaching phonemes, then words visually etc). My child's speech gains in 3 weeks are equivalent to the gains she had in a year with traditional speech therapy (she went for 1-2 words sentences to consistent 3-4 words and meaningful conversation as well as talking while playing). What they suggest for these issues is multihour therapy one to one...it's pretty much the Lindamood-bell approach, but can also be implemented differently, I found some verbal behavior therapists...guess what...yes...it works!! For now this is all I can implement in the UK, but these gains are amazing, she is so happy poor baby she is so happy she can talk! She said last night "I do summer salt" I was shocked and so used not to ask her directly that I asked her sister...did you just do a summer salt, how does she know this word? how did she remembered? and my little one replied "I membered"!! I cried so much after that! she understands so much more than what I think she does! I urge a lot of the parents on this board to just have a think about this in case it was missed for your child...and also ask you please please share what was useful for your child, this board is a lifeline for me and I will be forever grateful GG

Hello! We are moving soon to the area from out of the country and would love feedback on the Wayne-Berwyn area for areas to check out. We would be looking at 3-4 bedrooms homes and walking/biking distance from elementary schools/shopping etc. We have 2 girls age 4 and 6 and it would be great to hear about dance classes, girl scouts and good elementary schools. One of our children has special needs so any insight on that would also be fantastic! thank you! GG

Elizabeth sorry it did not publish my comment. I am living close to London and it would not be a difficult thing, the problem is to find other parents to pay for this. I am finding that here most people do not want to pay for private therapy, regardless on how bad is the public one. If we do have to stay longer than a few months though I might ask about it, thank you!

praises of the integrative listening system!!! This is really helping her with toileting! she is going daily, her stools are normal, we do not need any laxative (this is very unsual for her due to the low tone) she is also having a lot less wet accidents, says when she needs to go and hold the pee until we get to the toilet (again unsual, typically she would tell you pee pee when she is doing it). So far these are the improvements we had, it has only been 10 days but everyone has noticed at preschool too. So the processing was in the way for toileting too, poor little baby and noone so far has been able to advise on this (we saw 2 dev pediatrician, a normal pediatrician, a ped urologist, a GP and a number of therapis...yeah...I don't give up...NEVER!!!)

Hi, I am not an expert but I think PROMPT is only one of the methods used and it is totally possible to treat also apraxia with traditional speech therapy, if he is making progress to me sounds like the therapy is working. If you cannot afford more therapies don't beat yourself up, he is receiving some and you are seeing results, I do think that articulation issues are addressed in many ways and they resolve for the most part with drills. You can also look up on the internet blogs of SLTs and do stuff at home.

so we are in the UK, totally different ballpark, services have been a nightmare! We are trying to move back to the US and I have located PROMPT therapists there. Re: apraxia...she has hypermobility, our jaws (I have it too) are very hypermobile click and move out of allignment, that's why I was thinking PROMPT would help to teach her the right movements.I write down the VMPAC, i never heard of it. I am flying solo here...no-one believes me, the ST did not even know about listening programs or horse riding...it's awful! I was able to block a spot in a language enrichment preschool in PA for the fall with the assumption we will be moving...pray for us! ADDING on to this: her processing is mostly impacted when it comes to speech, complex tasks (can you find the boy that is NOT climbing on the stairs in this picture? can you give the cat a sandwich, an apple and a banana) that require working memory. making patterns for example etc...I was reading elsewhere that several of these tasks are mastered around 4 yr of age, she is not even 4, but they were the reasons for which she failed the speech tests.

thank you, we have assumed for ages she was apraxic (she is low tone and had low facial tone), in the UK I was not able to find any PROMPT therapist. We have been doing lots of oro motor stuff, the thing is, she doesn't have ANY of the apraxic errors, she can pronounce things very well, she doesn't have any inconsistent error. What she has is an obvious word retrieval issue (you just need to give her a very small hint for her to know the word) and she is showing issues with processing 3 key words commands that apparently should be mastered at 4. The ST here say she has a language processing disorder, but it seems it is more an overall issue with processing. Her hearing test was fine, in fact was too good, so yes we have been trying to figure out CAPD but they told us until they are 8 you cannot formally test them. They did an auditory discrimination test and she did fine. She has started talking a lot more since 3 weeks ago when we finally found a stable that let us ride horses and also we started the integrated listening system, this is to me pointing to a processing issue. We are continuing somewhat speech therapy but I wanted to try the ABA-VB approach as my child does very well with repetition and multi sensory learning as well as with praises. I am a bit shooting in the dark trying to figure out what else can be addressed that would help the speech thanks so much for brainstorming with me!

thank you, the fact is we just discovered this, her main issue is a major expressive speech delay. Now she is showing to have problems with receptive that are related to processing longer sentences. She does not have a lot of other issues that she seems to cope poorly with, but from my understanding of SID it can be a reason for language delays as it slowls down the processing of everything including executive functions (she for example has issues in recognizing she needs to go to the bathroom in busy places, she does well at thome though). I have the book and I am not loving it...I try to read it again thank you!

Hello! so it seems like this is the main reason for delays in my little girl, she is the under-aroused type, so she seems shy but in fact she is probably in sensory overload most of the time. Anyone here with this type of diagnosis that can share OT tips and what worked for your children? thank you so much! GG

thank you, as you well know this is a roughly rough road to be on

depending on what you look at she is about 6 months behind, except for speech, which is way off the scale. I look at it more...being free...it's tempting...nothing is free for these kids

some of you might like this article related to the relationship between hypotonia and a series of developmental problems. to me this made a lot of sense http://www.leonardkoziol.com/publications/hypotonia_2013.pdf

mmh this is interesting....anyone tried this in younger kids? My daughter is only 4 and it seems it might be something for later on?

yes, if my husband gets the job we are moving to the NW Philly area, along the outer part of the Main Line...good idea..I started booking spaces in therapeutic preschools and was moving along with therapist, the PROMPT is a new thought so I did not act upon it quite yet because we do not know yet where we will actually living. If anyone is from Philly here...please shout out! I need a buddy to figure things out

thank you, we have met with the OT, my child is definitely not autistic, by now everyone has said that, but this OT (who is American trained and REALLY good) found her sensory integration is very poor. She is convinced this is the problem for the speech, we are at risk of learning disabilities big time! I have started my own personal therapy experiment, at least for the time we are in the UK where it is almost impossible to find a program in preschool for children like her. I am hiring a VB tutor and a supervisor and will use my OT and SLT as our "consultants". Amazingly all this people loved the idea and are up for the challenge, we will also collect data so that we know best what and how it is working. We started also 30 min of iLS, she barely tolerates it, and several other sensory programs. We are doing time on a pony once a week. I know it seems a lot, but, she is tolerating it and this past 2 weeks have been amazing! she went from only set phrases (what's that? where is that gone?) to say "my socks are wet", "my horse called taffy, my horse is brown" and she has been singing non stop songs that I did not even knew she remembered! I am trying to stay realistic and trying to think it might plateau quickly...but I am writing this pretty much in tears of joy. Any suggestion any of you might have I will take it seriously. I am a scientist, I have been study neurobiology of child development for a while now and I am trying to select only those techniques that seem promising and implement them with the help of expert therapist to overcome the sensory overload and then the speech. Wish me luck love to everyone (especially the LO's) GG

thank you for this...well I did try...noone of them replies, the one that replied moved out of the UK. I guess I am going to try this as soon as we are in the US...which hopefully it is not longer than another 6 months.

AliR I have pretty much decided to ditch school thank you for supporting my thinking as everyone else is against it. Actually not true, the old preschool has been wornderful and offering to look into free funded hrs so I can spend more money on PM therapists (this is the people I like! they care about the child not the rules!) Lecka wow it is great to find others that have non autistic children doing VB, I am totally new to this, I read The Verbal Behavioral Approach by Mary Lynch Barbera only and just hired a young tutor last week (4 hr a week), my plan being to find a consultant and other tutors both in the UK and hopefully as soon as we move to the US. what is this below? no we did not do any evaluation, this only started because I finally got fed up with fruitless speech therapy and started approaching the problem on my own! Have you been able to evaluate with ABLLS or VB-MAPP? That is the thing here. thanks for the help and this is validating I am going in the right direction. We are seeing a sensory integration OT tomorrow and learning about the listening system as well... We are going all out as before she has struggled far too much due to the crappy diagnosis (or lack of)...I did not realize she has processing issues as the sensory ones are fairly mild and mostly are under-responding so more difficult to detect in a non very verbal child

Hello reading another post and looking more into this and knowing that we hopefully will get back to the States at some point soon prompted me the question (excuse the pun). My child is verbal, non autistic, possibly dyspraxic, with low muscle tone. Her speech is at a 30 months level, watching some of the PROMPT videos on 2 yr old made me cringe and I think she would have benefited. She is now able to linked 3-4 words together, but really struggles with expressive speech. Looking at the videos I can tell she has never been corrected in the phonemes formation and this might slow her down. Those of you that use/used PROMPT< do you think there is value in trying it for a child her age? in the UK I found only 2 bridging therapists about 1-2 hr from where we live, I might try to contact the closest. thank you for your input

thank you! Actually we are bi-lingual. She can understand Italian as well as English, her difficulties with longer commands are the same in both languages, her spoken Italian is very little, but mostly because we are trying to only use English for her and all her therapy is in English. Justin or Mr Tumble is a loved show, we watch it a lot. I am glad to hear that my findings (diagnostic is somewhat happening, therapy is non-existant) are realistic. I also ahve More than Words! yes I have implemented stuff from the book and the idea about learning to read I can try, she is recognizing several letters at the moment. How did you go about school? I am not happy they want me to put her in reception in Sept (she will be 4 and 1 month!) and I am considering to send her to her old preschool for social interactions, do home education and lots of therapy. I am also looking into more sensory itnegration and auditory processing remediation. I am trying out 4 h a week an ABA tutor specialized in verbal behavior and so far it actually seems to help more than speech therapy... THANK YOU for your replies

Hello, I am new to this forum, I found it through another online support group and I must say it is really amazing. I have 2 children age 5 and 1/2 and almost 4. My youngest girl has displayed mild global delays all her life. we know she has low muscle tone and hypermobility, she also has a severe speech delay that is now being tentatively diagnosed as "language processing disorder" or specific language impairment (SLI). We are living in the UK at the moment and the lack of diagnostic services as well as therapies has been appaling, we are trying to move back to the US as soon as possible to find a good school for her and her sister (who is typical but also not challenged at all in the school she is attending over here). We should be moving, if all goes well with my husband's jobs, in the NW Philly area and I would love to connect with anyone from there, more specifically Chester County. Additionally I am looking for more therapies ideas I can implement with her while still in the UK. She is almost 48 months, her speech is at the 30 months level, mostly the issue is lack of sentence forming abilities. She learns mostly visually and tactile, she does not learn very easily as a typical child just being exposed to the enviroment. Speech therapy here has been a failure, the improvements, while there, are very slow, and they failed to identify a receptive speech delay until I pointed it out and asked for more formal evaluations. I saw the program called TALKIES from Lindamood-bell and would love feedback. I just recently started looking into the integrative listening system, more OT, and also the ABA technique of verbal behavior. We don't have a lot of funds to pay for all these private therapies and the early intervention here is only speech therapy every other week or less with periodical breaks. The ABA/VB is for now only implemented for 4 hr a week with a young tutor under my direction (I am a clinician and I have started studying more and more of this trying to figure out what si wrong with our child). I would love to connect with parents that have children with processing disorders and find out about approaches and ideas. We are positive we are not in the autistic spectrum, she is very social and play/social skills are age appropriate. She is now showing some mild cognitive delays as well, which would be expected I think if you have very immature speech and processing issues. I want to make sure we offer the right support now rather than wait for the school system to point out faliures that I am sure will happen with the current status. I will write more another time, if you made it this far...thank you for reading!! GG

Hello, I have no advice but will be following your posts if you don't mind. I am new to the board and I have a 4 yr old daughter with global developmental delays form birth. Her biggest issue is speech and we are also bilingual. They are leaning to say she has cognitive delays but it is difficult to say due to her poor expressive language, as a minimum she qualifies for specific language impairment or language processing disorder mostly expressive but also receptive is starting showing issues mostly with the short term memory or working memory as you describe. Thank you for posting the techniques you tried with her, we are currently in the UK and the early intervention is a joke, plus private therapists are really not well versed in any of these techniques. GG

we are in the UK and will try this from next week, it is wonderful to see all these posts endorsing it. My child is 4 and has GDD, we do not know the specific reason, her speech is very affected but I do think it is a processing issue. Anyone else with experience with it I would love to hear more... as soon as we are back in the US (hopefully less than 6 months) I will be looking into buying one.