Cluttering?

[Jamee]

Has anyone had a child diagnosed with cluttering?  My son was officially diagnosed at the end of last year.  It seems to have a connection with a lack of short term memory and I'm wondering how we can go about improving his, especially where math facts come into play.  His long term memory is fantastic, but it's getting information there.  This will be a new experience for us. He's going into Middle School now so their speech services are rather different from what he had been getting and will have to take some classes--he's doing science which he loves.

[Lecka]

It was never his diagnosis, but my older son (now 10) cluttered and still has little bits of it, but he exited speech services at the end of 1st grade. 

 

He really had a lot of articulation problems and his main thing was "phonological processes."  

 

He fits a lot of things for dyslexia, and he had a difficult time learning to read, and I did a lot of dyslexia approaches with him.

 

We did a lot of things for math facts, and the last thing at the end was Reflex Math -- a computer game.  He liked it at first and then didn't like it.  But I had him doing it every day for about 5 months or so, and he made a lot of progress in that time.  He still has a long pause, but he does basically know them.  He doesn't have the super-fast recall.  

 

My son still has little bits of the cluttering, but the speech therapy he did for phonological processes really helped his overall intelligibility so much, that even though speech therapists might say he does it, he is totally intelligible now.  

 

I do not have much to add, really, just to say, that I have heard of cluttering, too!  It is one of those things where I would feel like nobody had heard of it!  And the name is a little odd  

[Jamee]

Thank you for your input. I had never heard of it until the spring, so it's nice to know someone else has. I think it's great that your son exited therapy. Last year was his first year that we had actually seen some progress.

 

He'd been doing xtra math, but he'd just never quite be able to move on. He's had a break, so maybe we should revisit it.

 

Thanks again.

[Lecka]

My son had 2 years of school-provided speech therapy with no progress.  Then the school speech therapist privately told me to try to get him into the university speech clinic, that I had no idea existed.  It turned out my insurance would pay for it.  

 

He made a lot of progress that year (1st grade), but it was hard work for him also.  It was a little stressful.  But he had problems from his lower intelligibility.  

 

We had done a lot, a lot for his math facts over the years.  I think part of it was that he was ready.  But he was also very resistant to working on math facts in a way, sometimes, and would not really get too much done.  But he was more willing to do Reflex Math.  I think it is a good program, but it was also just the right thing at the right time for him, and something he was willing to try.

 

He thought it was better than flashcards with mom, lol.  Or anything where he had to write by hand.  

[Dmmetler]

I have cluttered speech, as well as what was diagnosed as an articulation disorder and was later rediagnosed as dyspraxia. In both cases, for me it seems to be a case of brain control-the cluttering comes from messages not getting to the motor side smoothly enough to create smooth, fluent speech. It's kind of like driving with heavy traffic, with lots of stops and goes, vs driving on an interstate with cruise control.

 

I was in speech therapy K-12 and into college (-my university extended my IEP and provided speech services until I graduated). We spent a lot of time developing awareness, but the biggest part was learning to relax and not get nervous or upset when something didn't work-because that makes the cluttering worse. So, I'd have a block due to the dyspraxia, where I wanted to say something, and either the sounds didn't come out right, or I couldn't come up with the word and actually say it (names are the worst on this. I know exactly who the person is, but for some reason, my brain can't make my mouth say the name. It's weird and very frustrating), and I get flustered and it backs up and becomes worse and worse.

 

What helped most, honestly, was becoming an early teen and wanting to talk on the phone, and having friends who were willing to put up with my speech as I worked on it. I suspect that if I'd been a teen now, when texting (and various other forms of messaging) is so common, I might have never learned as much speech control as I did-because I could have used the devices to communicate without having to talk. But back in the days when teenagers were glued to the phone, I had to develop those skills. And I find that it can be harder now where I can easily go days without having to talk to anyone-I really have to pay much closer attention to my speech than I did 20 years ago, because now I do default to e-mail, facebook, and texts vs actually talking to people face to face or by phone. 

 

 

[Jamee]

Thanks for your insight.  I really hope his new speech pathologist takes this seriously--he'd never heard of it before.