How do you deal with the mental fatigue of speech delay?

[Desert Strawberry]

Luna is a chatterbox, as most 3yos are. But her speech is so hard to understand. I spend an immense amount of mental energy just trying to decipher her speech. She's very demanding. I'm so exhausted from it I want to cry for both of us. She's generally good-natured and compliant with me. If I can figure out what she's saying. 

It also seems she relates to her brothers exclusively in screams. 

She's on summer break from speech therapy. She's seen the audiologist. She's waiting on referral to ENT for a mild hearing problem. She no longer qualifies for other therapies. 

Aside from taking breaks from her (which, you know, I do what I can), any advice for us?

[wendyroo]

I don't have any good advice, but I can commiserate.

All of my kids have had significant articulation delays, so I will often have two or three of them jabbering at me in undecipherable gibberish that they fully expect me to understand and respond to appropriately.  My brain is leaking out through my ears by 9 am.

 We also deal with the constant screaming.  At the park today, even my almost 5 year old consistently resorted to screaming at the other kids (both siblings and strangers) because he could not organize and articulate his thoughts.  It is a horrible, fingernails on a chalkboard scream that makes it very unpleasant to be around him for any length of time.  So far Audrey does more crying than screaming (which I can mentally handle better), but if she follows in her brothers' footsteps, then her screaming days are just around the corner.  ?

Wendy

[PeterPan]

You may want to get a 2nd opinion on your speech services. A 3yo should be 75% intelligible to strangers,and your dc isn't even that percentage intelligible to you. :(

Personally, I'd be wondering about motor planning (apraxia) given that intelligibility is the issue. And for apraxia, you're looking for someone well-trained in PROMPT.

[Desert Strawberry]

13 hours ago, PeterPan said:

You may want to get a 2nd opinion on your speech services. A 3yo should be 75% intelligible to strangers,and your dc isn't even that percentage intelligible to you. ?

Personally, I'd be wondering about motor planning (apraxia) given that intelligibility is the issue. And for apraxia, you're looking for someone well-trained in PROMPT.

What is PROMPT? How do I access it? 

She is progressing, but IMO very slowly and she just has a long way to go. She just had a progress report, and she'll have another in the fall. I'm not opposed to getting additional private services for her, especially over the summer. 

Apraxia is definitely a possibility. She's had other delays in the past. Any suggestions where to begin?

ETA: She measured 60% intelligible at her last screening. 

[PeterPan]

Intelligibility can be measured by an SLP, but usually once they're working with the dc they're getting used to them, making it not a good measure. Our SLP always asked us what percentage he was intelligible to strangers. So the SLP at the ps might measure SLP when she sees my ds once a year or for the first time, but once they're in therapy you want to know how intelligible they are to strangers. I'm guessing the percentage will be lower. Otherwise you wouldn't be so frustrated and commenting on it.

https://www.promptinstitute.com/default.aspx  PROMPT is a totally different therapy and it takes several years to get certified in it. It can be hard to find someone who is committed to it who has done the levels of training. 

From where I am, farther down the road, I'll tell you that you're fighting the motor planning issue and not even beginning to deal with the hurdle of language. That's what we're dealing with now, that it took so much just to get his motor planning for speech in place that they weren't addressing his language deficits. They'll sneak up on you too, and language affects EVERYTHING. It's all your normal VB-MAPP, FFC kind of stuff.

I'm saying be aggressive because this is what is going to come back to bite you. It's nice that some people's language comes in and the issues go away, but for the kids for whom they don't, they really don't.