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Any speech therapists around to help me make sense of something?
kcisthebombdotcom
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My son was a very late talker. He has about five words at 18 months, 40 words and no two word phrases at two. He gradually improved until at 2y5m he started speaking in five word sentences with proper pronoun/verb tenses. When he was retested at a little bit past 2.5 he scored at above the 50th percentile for expressive language with high scores in receptive language/cognition. His slp told me it wasn't too unheard of for bright kids to talk late and he definitely has a perfectionist personality. Apraxia was a real concern of mine at the time due to the fact his speech was very unclear, he had trouble finding words and family history so we pushed for continued services past his ei transition. He ended up getting speech 2xs a week. When he transitioned the slp who tested him said he was maybe 20% intelligible and a little higher if you caught the context, like if he was pointing at something. Since then he's made incredibly fAst progress. By the time school let out last June he was fully intelligible and had mastered 8 out of 10 sounds on his iep. By September he had mastered 9 out of 10. His former slp from ei works with my dd now so she sees him every week--she's told us multiple times he really doesn't need speech anymore. We recently amended his iep to include some new goals since he mastered nearly all the old ones--they're all sounds above what you'd expect for his age (like l blends and ch). I assumed that when he had mastered the last age appropriate error he would be released from speech therapy but his therapist keeps talking about how at his birthday well redo his iep again and set new goals again. Why would they keep him and is there any benefit to keeping him in speech? I'm so booked with my DDs needs. Of course If he really needs it well keep going but I'm kind of at a loss of where the benefit is.
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Re: Any speech therapists around to help me make sense of something?
I would ask the SLP what her specific goals would be then look at age/IEP criteria or goals. When DD's EI SLP started talking about early discharge (before feeding issues), the OT from EI who was our last therapist added on was really surprised and appalled - even asking ME if I was sure. DD's SLP was the first EI therapist so she has seen DD from one word to now sentences with much improvement in all skills; I was told that since OT was added on last/late, she probably didn't see DD at her "worst" if you will so progress in that area was hard for her to see since she had already come so far.
It could be the newer SLP has a different starting point, so she thinks more progress is needed when maybe it is not.