Has your child had speech therapy?

Anya is going to start to go to a speech therapist soon, just waiting on the call from the therapist, I talked to the director of it today. She is almost 4, and we still do not understand about half of what she says. What types of things will a speech therapist do with her? I really hope it helps her. She was born very early, and the NICU followup said that sometimes they fall behind in little things because of that.

DS is in speech therapy for that same reason. He'll be 4 in April. He and the therapist mostly do games and puzzles, and she corrects him and shows him how to pronounce words that he doesn't say clearly. He was also preemie, born at 35 weeks.

Quoting Supafly★:" DS is in speech therapy for that same reason. He'll be 4 in April. He and the therapist mostly do games ... [snip!] ... and she corrects him and shows him how to pronounce words that he doesn't say clearly. He was also preemie, born at 35 weeks. "

Have you noticed a difference in his speech?

It might be different because she is at least verbal to a degree, my son is nonverbal. But they do like "play therapy". She says the names of things, and tries to teach him the words and such. They are working with a basic communication device right now to see if that's something he can work with.

I know a girl with a speech impediment, who sees the other therapist in the office. I hear them working a lot, and they read stories and such and when the girl says a word wrong the therapist stops and helps her figure out how to say it correctly. As well as speech exercises, like making speech noises (th- sounds, fa-sounds, sh-sounds =etc) and figuring out how to get your mouth in the right positions to be able to MAKE the sounds in the first place.

I also think it's largely individual based on YOUR child's needs, they do the eval and then after the first one or two sessions you can kind of figure how it's going to go

Quoting Taryn - Anya's mommy:" Have you noticed a difference in his speech?"

Yes, absolutely. It's still not that clear but it was really bad when he first started. At 18 month level when he turned 3 1/2.

My sons speech therapist does a lot of stuff with pictures. Asks him to point out certain things or tries to get him to tell her what he thinks they are doing, they do word exercises to help him with pronunciation. Stuff like that, he's been in speech for around 2 1/2 years now with a special needs school but has only had extra speech for around 8 months. He's 5 and has the vocab and speech of a 2-3 year old.

Things are probably a lot different now, but when I was around that age I had to go to speech therapy (I'm 18 now) and all I remember doing is games, puzzles, just a lot of pronouncing words and things like that. I don't remember going there too many times so there must have been improvement.. the only thing is that I have a lisp now. Haha

Thank you everyone, I just really wanted to know what to expect.

My son just turned three and even though he can understand EVERYTHING we say or tell him to do he refused to talk. He has all the tools to talk but just has no interest. He goes to speech therapy once a week and his speech has improved SO MUCH! His vocabulary was that of maybe 3 words when we started and now he can say two word sentences, tells me what sounds animals make, and a huge list of words. All she does with him is flash cards, games, and she makes him tell her (using beginning sounds mostly) what he wants. I also work with him a lot during the day so it's a constant effort but speech therapy has helped tremendously!

Do you use flash cards with her or anything similar? They will mostly start her with that. Does she make beginning sounds?

ETA: my son wasn't preemie - just saw this on the boards and thought I could help. >.<

Quoting Cass Hole:" My son just turned three and even though he can understand EVERYTHING we say or tell him to do he refused ... [snip!] ... Does she make beginning sounds? ETA: my son wasn't preemie - just saw this on the boards and thought I could help. >.<"

You didn't need to have a preemie to answer,  , so thank you for telling me your experience.

My youngest was born at 35 weeks and spent 20 days in the NICU. He ended up having to have speech therapy, but we did it through our school district. There was a lot of work with pictures. Mostly, though, we would make the sounds and then have him mimic us. It really only took a couple of months for us to see a huge difference. Plus, it helped with his education and he was put in kindergarten a week after his fifth birthday knowing more then most of the older children.

All of my children that are in school had to do speech therapy except my 4 year old. 2 of them were premees, but the other ones arrived on time. They love speech. They do flash cards, games and get rewards. My 2 premees only had to do 1 year of speech.