D.C. Area Babies
Speech Therapy?
I took my son to his 2 year checkup and was told by the doctor she recommend my son start speech therapy. I'm fine with the fact they want him to see someone but I was wondering if any other Mom's have done this with their children. What were your experences? I live in Fairfax County and have already started the process by calling for them to send me the forms. I've asked all of my friends with kids but none of them have had to do speech therapy so I'm just trying to understand the basics for now.I did ask this on the 24 months + board too but figured it might help to see if any local mom's have gone through this. Thank you for all your responses. I really appreciate it.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Speech Therapy?
My daughter started speech therapy through Fairfax County at 21 months, and we've really had a great experience. It's a bit of a pain at first because you have to fill out the forms, get assigned a Service Coordinator, then the Service Coordinator comes to your house to meet with you and fill out one of those Ages and Stages Questionnaires. Then you get scheduled to go to the County office for an evaluation. Your service coordinator will be there along with a speech therapist and an occupational therapist. They'll evaluate your child's speech, as well as gross and fine motor skills. If your child qualifies, you will then be assigned a speech therapist. The whole process takes about six weeks.
We were assigned a speech therapist that is a contractor for FFX County. She is awesome and DD absolutely loves her! She comes once a week, brings a bag of toys and basically sings and plays with DD while prompting her to say new words. At first we worked on signs but now she is progessing really well so we're working on 3 syllable words and 3 word sentences. I've been really, really pleased with our therapist and my daughter's progress.
You are fortunate to live in FFX; a girlfriend of mine lives in Prince William and has not had a very positive experience with speech therapy for her son. In fact, she just cancelled services and is going the private therapist route.
Good luck and page me if you have any questions!
I am doing Physical Therapy with Montgomery County Infants and Children and I have been very happy with their services. I have also seen DD make a lot of progress since she's started which feels good. If Fairfax's program is just as good, I think you'll be really happy with it. I also liked that with Montgomery County's program, they really encourage parent involvement. So, they teach me how to work with her too which makes me feel more empowered and gives me the tools to help her be successful.
In general, I've heard good things about these programs and I hope you have a good experience as well.
My son has been receiving speech therapy since he was 2. We live in Arlington county, and started out first with services from the county. After I first called, a coordinator came out to do an initial eval and then we had a full eval (covering all developmental areas). The end result was an IFSP which sets out his goals and frequency of therapy. You can receive services through the county's Early Intervention Program until age 3 -- after that you will transition to services through the school system, which involves another round of evaluations and meetings.
I have to say, I did not have the best experience with the county and ended up going with a private evaluation and private therapy -- DS has a neurological issue related to his speech that the evaluators missed. We were on a wait list to even be assigned a therapist through the county (a speech language pathologist -- SLP) and the one we were eventually assigned did not have experience with his condition. On this front, I am something of a helicopter mom as my son (quite literally) can't speak for himself. Being actively involved with his therapy and asking questions has been the best thing I have done.
Our therapy itself is play-based, using toys to develop language. For example, we play with an old school FP cash register, and he has to tell me he wants "more" to get the coins; the coins go "in"; they coins come "out"; etc.
If you have any other questions, you could also post on the Special Needs board. We have a lot of people whose kids receive speech therapy over there and some SLPs as well.
Thank you ladies so much!
I didn't want to just google speech therapy because I know if I did I would have been bombarded with horror stories and every possible bad outcome that I could imagine and some I probably could not.
I am extremely grateful to live in an area where we can choose between the country and private programs. My husband is a teacher with Fairfax so I know it's hard to find people who really do care about their profession no matter what they do. I'll keep my fingers crossed it is a good experience but at least I do have options.
I was extremely nervous about the process beforehand but now hearing your stories I feel much more comfortable with what's ahead.
JenGk- I didn't even think of the special needs board. I'm heading over that way now to do a little browsing. I'm glad to hear you did catch the root of the problem after all. My husband has dyspraxia and they didn't diagnose him until he was much older after many teachers just kept saying he was lazy. I don't call it helicopter mom, I call it caring about your child!
Ghostgirl- Thank you for giving me a time line. When I talk to the women yesterday she just said a couple of weeks... you never know how long thats going to be!
VTkendra- I hope that they do show me and my DH tools to use with him. I don't understand why any parent would not want to be involved in the process. It is to help your child and you should be giving them every advantage you can, not someone else.
Ben is currently in EI (Early Intervention) and will transition to ChildFind (Loudoun County) come September, mainly for speech apraxia. I had a severe developmental delay in speech as well (didn't talk until I was three) so I was definitely concerned for him. Originally the Coordinator didn't feel he met eligibility, so I had to bring in a 3rd party SLP whose report tipped the scales in our favor.
His SLP is wonderful - she comes to our home and to the daycare, and has worked with us and the teachers on ways to get him more communicative. His vocabulary has improved greatly - still a long journey but we are making progress.
Once he transitions out of EI he'll go to a school for speech language services. Well, hopefully - our eligibility meeting for that is after Memorial Day.