Questions about DS's speech therapy

[misskitty100]

DS (4yrs old) has been going to speech therapy for about 4 weeks now. He has had tongue thrust issue and also was diagnosed as a bit of a stutterer (sp?).

The tongue thrust stuff is going well and the therapists have decided that after the next 2 weeks he will not need to be seen for that any longer. After that, they will switch to helping him with stuttering. They proposed the Lidcomb method and I will get to know more about that soon. I was just wondering if anyone here has gone thru this and what your experiences have been? I honestly never paid much attention to his stuttering until we took him in for the tongue thrust and the therapist picked up on it right away.

If you have gone thru stuff like this I am wondering what (if anything) do you tell your family? DH and I are VERY private when it comes to DH's family. We do not discuss any medical type stuff with them as they tend to really blow things out of proportion. Last night we were at DH's brother's house (and the IL's were there too) and DS started to stutter a little bit. BIL at that point *tried* to make a joke about DS and Bob Newhart...:confused: :rolleyes: :mad: . Of course he doesn't know that DS is in therapy but it still bothered me (then again, a lot of the things that side of the family does bother me).

Any advice going forward would be much appreciated!

[Laura]

DD went through speech therapy for a lisp that took almost a year to correct; she also stammered (I don't know why they used that term, but the therapist did), which she "outgrew" before the therapy for the lisp ended.

I am amazed that an adult would tease a child about stutter or stammer problem, but I was pretty up front about my dd's therapy. I once had a mother of a child point out that dd had a lisp and I simply told her that we were going to therapy and she was making great progress.

I do remember telling family, because my sister picked up on the lisp before I did. Every family is different, but for me I don't remember going out of the way to tell people, but I didn't intentionally not tell them either.

DS has been diagnosed with ADD and since he is 15 I have allowed him to make the decision to tell people. He has told his close friends and their families, but I don't know beyond that.

[leightx]

DS (6) was in speech therapy just over a year for stuttering. His speech therapist called it "bumpy speech" or "bumpy words". We did it through the school, and he had an excellent (and free) speech pathologist. He's officially finished with it, but I've noticed that he's been stuttering a bit more since he got out of school. We'll see how the summer goes...we have our speech pathologist's email if we need to contact her.

I readily told our family that he was in speech therapy, but we tend to have that kind of relationship. Also, it didn't bother DS or me to let people know. There's certainly no shame in it, and I'd imagine that at 4, your daughter isn't even self-conscious about it. My son would get really frustrated at himself (he would get stuck and couldn't get even the first letter or 2 out), but he was never worried about what other people thought. His speech therapist also reinforced the fact that it is relatively common, especially among boys, and nothing to be ashamed of. She worked with getting him to identify his own bumpy speech, and progressing from getting completely stuck, to "bumping", to taking a slow, deep breath, and getting the words out. There were more steps involved, but I don't remember them off the top of my head.

Hope that helps!

[dixie]

my now 18 yr old DS was in speech for years! From 4 yr old preschool til 4th grade I believe - about 6 years. He had several problems when we started - mostly beginning sounds, all blends (sh, th, br...) He got beyond those very quickly but just couldn't get that pure "r" sound, either at the beginning of a word or in the middle for quite sometime. It was just part of our life, not a big thing to announce, nor something to hide...and I still remember the day his speech therapist called me on my cell phone to tell me we had a "break through"! He finally just "got it", and his speech has been perfect ever since...we've always been so thankful that a caring preschool teacher pushed us into speech therapy thru the public school system early.

[Lisa W]

Our 4 yr old son has been going to a speech therapist for about 12 months for "bumpy speech". Although the past 8 months have been with a different therapist, as the first wasn't really working (nothing against her -- she was really good and such a sweet person). The therapist we were switched to specialized in the Lidcomb method. DS had a lot of "bumps" in his speech and some secondary features associated (jaw/neck/face would get a locked or tightened look when stuck on a sound and he was very aware of his bumps and would be embarrased/frustrated). It has made a tremendous difference in DS, although it did take a little longer than is recommended in the program. But one day it just .... happened. And what a difference in that little boy!

We made family aware of the "bumpy speech" when DS wasn't in earshot, only because we didn't want someone to try and help him in their own way, or to make a joke about getting stuck or something. That way, there were no mixed signals to DS on how to "fix" his "bumpy speech".

We're down to seeing the speech therapist to every 4 weeks and that's mostly for other areas (L's we're working on now).