Speech therapy for toddlers?

[xixstar]

So I got all clucky hen with my fourth child and got super antsy when at 20 months he still had no words. Like none, didn't call us anything, didn't refer to anything else. But he did sign with 2-3 signs. He has no other delays.

 

So I finally couldn't take it anymore, despite everyone saying some kids are slower and often boys are too -- it was just too far beyond normal for me having had 3 kids not do this-- and I had him evaluated.

 

He qualifies for speech therapy and of course as soon as we did the evaluation he starts finally using words -- they're still very hard to understand but there's way more than 0 and he seems now to finally be moving forward (and no I don't think we are just paying more attention now, he actually started 2 weeks before the evaluation appointment was held).

 

He seems to be on a line that may just be taking longer and will probably catch up. The SLP thinks not doing therapy would probably be okay and doing it would be okay too -- leaving it to me to decide because I'm reluctant to add to our plate if it's not necessary.

 

So -- anyone else in a similar situation find speech therapy with a 2 year old (24 month old when we will start) useful?

 

Or anyone do speech therapy and realized it was what you were already doing (lots of reading, talking, naming, mimicking, etc) and not as worthwhile?

 

Just curious about other people's experiences. Thank you.

[Hilltopmom]

It may be all stuff you already do, but, if you're using the early intervention program (free & the therapist comes to your house), I'd do it.

All of my kids have LOVED their special time with their therapist (we Foster, I've had lots of littles who got services & I used to provide in home services myself)...someone who comes to play! with just them! A few times a week!

I get 1:1 time with the other little while one works with their teacher.

 

If you don't have other littles at home, it's still a nice time for kiddo & you can participate if you want (it's encouraged, but I do not).

 

If you don't like a therapist, it's ok to request a switch, FYI.

[heartlikealion]

I had my 2.5 yr old evaluated recently by Early Intervention (I've also heard it called First Steps here). She did not meet criteria for Early Intervention. Her speech improved a good bit between the initial intake and the actual eval. The eval. kept getting delayed so weeks had passed. Mine adds "uh" to the end of words and doesn't use as many as was ideal for her age at her 2 year checkup. She was not using very many. I was really having trouble coming up with the words. It was like mama, dada, bye bye and maybe a handful of others. She says much more now, but a lot of them are said incorrectly. "cute" is "cu-ought." "Please" is "pea-uh." I can get her to do the "z" at the end sometimes but she struggles with make "pl" so there's no L sound. She can say the "L" sound independently. Long story short the eval. had hardly anything to do with speech. They asked if she could throw a ball, stack blocks, etc. They just said when she turns 3 it goes over to the school district and it would be a good idea to call and see if she qualifies for speech articulation. She also drops endings off words. I don't know what she says for milk exactly but you can't hear "k."

 

Fast forward a week or two later I ran into an SLP at a homeschool sign up event. She was there with an audiologist at a vendor booth. We talked privately at the end of the event and I asked if she usually looked inside the child's mouth when evaluating. She said yes unless the kid really doesn't want to because she doesn't want to traumatize them and make them cry. She tries to figure out a way to do it without being invasive, though. Anyway, so I told her that my child has had two frenectomies and I didn't know if that has anything to do with her speech or not but that the SLP at the EI eval. didn't even look in her mouth. I had a dr/IBCLC that does frenectomies look at my dd's mouth post surgery for her opinion once. She looked at mine and the baby's and said mine is worse and she wasn't really worried. That did put my mind at some ease. But function and visual looks don't always go hand in hand. My dad also has a tied tongue but he does wonderfully with language compared to me. I think I am not physically able to roll/trill an R in Spanish. Anyway, the SLP basically said I may need to show her lip and tongue placement and work with her and if I want to have her seen by the school district to call ASAP to line up an appointment because they will be packed.

 

Just thought I'd throw that in there. If you want to look at your child's mouth I can give you some links. I know my dd is still tied but I don't know if it will affect her speech or not. She's improved a lot. She used to scream at me all.the.time. Now she speaks more. I don't always know what she's saying but there's definitely been progress.

 

In short, you probably have some free resources available and if you want to use those, I would say go that route. Are you in the US? Did you go to a private speech therapist or no? What did your pediatrician think? Mine just said she urged me to have dd evaluated before she turned 3.

[heartlikealion]

In our area the therapist does not come to the home. Which for me worked out okay. They initially tried to send me to another county. Then they said no that's not necessary and let me come to the local one. But the SLP we saw was from the other county's school district.

[Ailaena]

We started speech therapy with ds two weeks before his first birthday. Dd was in speech therapy @3 so I knew lots of tricks and things to do, but he qualified and it's free to me, so I said why not? I still found starting that young very, very valuable. If you can afford it with no worries, having speech therapy cannot hurt. I just don't see a drawback.

 

Now it took a long time to get ds to figure out why the lady comes over and plays with him, but once he did, he started practicing sounds consistently. His progress has not been a linear curve, more of an exponential curve. He had an eval at 22 months that put him in the 9-10 mo range expressive speech and it has now been two months since that exam and he is caught up. He is actually pretty far beyond caught up, and we are talking about an end date :'(

 

Would it have happened anyways? Maybe, who's to say. But the signing we have done with him gave him a crazy huge vocabulary and he has great body awareness from having to deliberately think about making sounds. I swear it made him easy to work with, like he understands taking turns and paying attention to people. Anyways, my $0.02, hth!

[MEmama]

My son HATED therapy and his therapist. We didn't keep him in long because it was such a joke. As we suspected, he grew out of it despite their dire warnings. Of course that's not everyone's experience, but I'm skeptical of the need for most young kids.

 

(Ducking rotten tomatoes)

 

I'm a BIG believer in drowning out the noise and following your mama intuition. :)

[Tangerine]

I had 2 who weren't speaking at that age.  I found that utilizing EI was our best choice.  The oldest had a crappy therapist, and I was young and didn't know my options.  My youngest has had amazing therapists.  My youngest started therapy quite early, and everyone thought he was just a little behind, and as it turns out he's still having quite a bit of trouble.  I'm glad we got started.

[SeaConquest]

We had a great experience with EI, and now, at 4, my little one is doing great. If they come to you, I highly recommend it.

[Terabith]

I had a great experience with my daughter, but what was REALLY helpful was buying Signing Time dvds and doing a TON of signing as a family.  I'm a hugely big proponent of early intervention, but you could always try it and if it's not going well, stop. 

[luuknam]

My 10yo liked all his speech therapists, iirc... but I've found it to be quite a time drain, dragging him to school for speech therapy 3x/week. He's had speech therapy since he was 2.5yo, so, for 3/4 of his life (I actually tried to get him in when he was younger, but he just missed the cut-off for qualifying). He's *still* not always intelligible to us, and quite frequently not to strangers, at least not without repeating himself. He's made progress, but he probably would've made *some* progress without therapy as well, so it's hard to tell if it's been worth it thus far. I've got an eval scheduled for 10 days from now... sigh. 

 

So, YMMV. If it's free and they'll come to your house and your kid enjoys it, I'd give it a try, because why not? 

[amo_mea_filiis.]

I'd probably go. Some kids will catch up, others will not. I don't think there's a clear line between the two.

 

Mine should have, but did not qualify for EI. He had inconsistent speech through insurance starting at 2. Consistent once he transitioned to the school district at 2yrs9mo. He'll be 13 this fall and still has speech 3x/week.

[wonderchica]

Just a reminder to all, early intervention is slightly different in every state. Direct therapies such as speech are NOT always free. It depends on your state's program and sometimes your insurance/ability to pay within your state. Speech is not free to all families in my state through EI.

[xixstar]

Thanks for the feedback, it is very helpful. I was leaning towards doing it because it wouldn't hurt and speech therapy is free where I live. At this age they will come to my house. I believe that when they get older, they do it at the local school but it's still free until they reach school age -- and then it is cut off if you homeschool. He EI and speech therapy are two different things, the EI educator kept making it very clean that he doesn't qualify for Early Intervention but yet he does qualify for speech, I imagine they really confuse some parents with their wording.

 

I only have the toddler at home during the day, so it isn't really a burden other than not liking to have people come to my house. My personal instinct tells me something is not right even if he is finally adding words (maybe I should call them sounds for words -- that's a better description).   

 

 I was curious on other's experiences especially since the SLP was being a little wishy washy, probably because she thought I was being very wishy washy. To be fair, the evaluation was held during a very stressful week where adding one more thing to my proverbial plate felt like the straw that would break the camel's back -- but now that we're reaching back to school season, adding speech therapy is more manageable. 

[Mergath]

I'd err on the side of doing it as long as the child enjoys it and it isn't a massive hardship. Dd started it as a toddler, and while I don't know how much it helped, it certainly didn't hurt. And if you're worried that there may be some kind of underlying condition affecting speech, it can't hurt to have a professional who knows your child and sees him on a regular basis who could provide valuable input if the time comes to make a diagnosis.

[Crimson Wife]

Having taken the "Language Assessment and Intervention from Birth-5" class as part of my bachelor's in Communicative Disorders but not yet started my master's in SLP here is my $0.02:

 

-IF the 24 mos. old is using an appropriate amount of "communicative intentions" (signs, gestures, pointing, vocalizations, etc.) which would be 5+ per minute AND

-the child's receptive understanding of language is age-appropriate AND

-there are no other developmental concerns

 

Then it's okay to take a "watchful waiting" approach and reevaluate in 6 months if there are still concerns. There is a LOT of speech development expected between 24 and 30 months. Receptive language precedes expressive language and the toddlers who most need early intervention ASAP are those with both expressive AND receptive delays.

 

My child who started speech therapy at 27 months and really should've started it earlier had both receptive and expressive delay plus all sorts of other "red flags". She is now 8.5 and still needs speech therapy as she's at about a 5-6 y.o. level both receptively and expressively.