Private Speech Therapy

Kintarō Hattori

Hi Folks,

Our little lady will be 17 months old at the end of this month. As a baby that had low muscle tone initially and as a bi-lingual baby we're a smidgen concerned that at this stage she doesn't really babble. A few months back she started saying 'Babababababa' or 'Mammamamamamamama' and then pretty much stopped. In our mind she was leaving the verbal exercises to concentrate on things physical.
She learned to spin around on her tummy at the start of April and began to crawl during July. Since then she's speeding around and has been doing plenty of shuffling along the sofa and pulls herself up beside other pieces of furniture. Occasionally she'll even stand herself straight up before sitting down again. She also takes her walker and whizzes between the kitchen and living room on her knees. While she's doing great in that respect we think she should perhaps be doing more verbally. She understands us perfectly and can take on complex tasks if you ask her but there's no attempt to pronounce any words.

With her not expected to be seen in the HSE until January-March next year I'm going to look at private speech therapy. Does anyone have any recommendations?

shesty

Ok, firstly I know Arc speech therapy around Clarehall are good.
But...you are very unlikely to get a speech therapist willing to work with a 17 month old.All they have is babble, maybe a few sounds.As a bilingual child, it is generally acknowledged they will have even less.So for example a two year old may have 50 different words (random example), but a bilingual two year old will have 50 words...but really only 25 as they will have two words for some things, if that makes sense.I would not expect much from a 17 month old maybe some sounds towards mama, dada, and random things like ball, teddy, cup that only you can understand.The absolute best thing you can do is keep talking to her ...when you are at home and out and about, point out the blue tractor, the big van, the cow, the red car....keep at it.And at home, repeat phrases, so if she is pointing and wants something say "do you want the red cup", "Would you like to sit in your chair?' to her, stuff like that, over and over and over.
I think certainly go and talk to a therapist but don't be surprised if they send you away.My two year old's two year assessment at the PHN, I was worried that her speech wasn't too clear-the PHN was happy enough but said she would keep an eye if I wanted.She is now just two and a half and is becoming understandable to other people only now, compared to my first who could clearly count 1-5 aged 14 months (she hadn't a clue what she was doing but her words were clear as a bell).They really do all develop at their own pace but they big key thing is costantly chatting to them.(This has backfired spectacularly for us in one way on our first as she is now four and is just one continuous sentence from dawn to dusk ....my head is melted)

Kintarō Hattori

Thanks shesty, I hear what you're saying but I think you might have missed what I'm saying. She's saying nothing. She laughs, cries and squeaks but that's about it.

jlm29

As shesty said you’re unlikely to find a therapist who will work with your little girl at that age. There’s just not a huge amount they would be able to do with a child who isn’t old enough to understand, follow commands etc.
I know it’s a different situation, but one of my kids had a lisp, and a friend of mine is an SLT, and she said she wouldn’t give him a program to work on until he was around 4. It may be that when your daughter is seen initially, she could be sent off until she is a bit older with no intervention.

If you do find someone who will work with her though, beware of being taken for a ride. The person who won’t take your money might be far better than the one who will take your money knowing that they can’t really do anything. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen, unfortunately.
If I were in your position, I would ring the early intervention team, or whoever your daughter has been referred to, and ask if they think there’s any value in going privately, and also if they can recommend anyone

shesty

No I do know what you're saying but what I'm telling you is she's 17 months.Developmentally, she just isn't old enough for them to work with.As with jlm, an SLT assessed my then 2 and 4 mth old a couple of months ago, and said yeah, bit of a lisp, some of her sounds aren't too clear but they wouldnt do anything til she was at least three, more likely four.Up to at least two and older, they rely on the parent to tell them how many words the child has, and the work would be for the parent to do, they do very little with the actual child.

You can contact your PHN and ask if they would do a referral for you, and see what their reaction is.

Iwouldinmesack

shesty wrote: »

No I do know what you're saying but what I'm telling you is she's 17 months.Developmentally, she just isn't old enough for them to work with.As with jlm, an SLT assessed my then 2 and 4 mth old a couple of months ago, and said yeah, bit of a lisp, some of her sounds aren't too clear but they wouldnt do anything til she was at least three, more likely four.Up to at least two and older, they rely on the parent to tell them how many words the child has, and the work would be for the parent to do, they do very little with the actual child.

You can contact your PHN and ask if they would do a referral for you, and see what their reaction is.

Maybe look into teaching them some Lámh, this may help with their development. This is a communication aid that pairs our native Irish Sign Language that is used by me and others in the Irish Deaf community with spoken English. It is generally used then with hearing children with developmental issues and or with intellectual difficulties,who are autistic etc with great success. I believe that Lámh only consists of 500 words/signs. Food, eat, sleep etc n so on. Not complete sentences unlike a language as it is there to assist with their communication.

fits

OP does she point, wave or reach to be picked up?

fits

We are also waiting for a Hanen course for parents to aid with speech development. That’s through public SLT ( which we are on waiting list for). Might be worth looking into.

Kintarō Hattori

fits wrote: »

OP does she point, wave or reach to be picked up?

She does all three.

fits

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

She does all three.

then she is communicating well 😄. All three are precursors to language.

Liam McPoyle

Our little man is almost 18 months and had around 6 sessions with an S & L therapist at around 12/13 months so I'm not sure why people are saying there aren't therapists that will work with kids that age.

He too had low muscle tone and had a full assessment done with enable Ireland. Thankfully everything with that came back more or less in the normal range but they felt that he would benefit from some S & L therapy. We could have waited to be seen publicly but he would only be getting seen around now so we were not willing to wait.

The therapist we used was wonderful however the work she did was with myself and my wife and how we communicated and interacted with him.

Someone above mentioned the Hanen method, that's what she used. Google "owling"

Stands for

Observe
Wait
Listen

Watch what they are doing ie if they want something, how do they tell you?

Wait for them to make the signal. We had a tendency to steam in and try and give him what he wanted before he was letting us know. We found it good to ask him "dada / mama help" so he figured out that if he wanted something but couldn't express what, he'd point and say help. Try putting a favourite toy out of her reach and when she points to it say "dada help" while looking at her then give it to her. It reinforces that you will help her if she asks.

Listen to what she is saying. If she is making sounds while pointing at something she knows what she wants so let her lead. Mimic the sounds she is making. Ie, if she says googoo, you say googoo, it's a precursor to a conversation and it's important for them to have that.

We did all of the above with himself and even if I do say so myself, his vocabulary is staggering for his age. He can point to all parts of the head - eyes, teeth, mouth etc and name them, he knows and can say a huge amount of animals, he is now stringing mini sentences together like "hello daddy" "bye bye mama". He can say his grandparents names and is mimicking us constantly. Tequila is one of his favourite words and he got it from the song tequila by the champs. Physically he is flying too and is now walking more than he is crawling.

I'd also recommend getting books that have alot going on in them. He LOVES books and his favourites are Peepo and The Hungry Caterpillar. They are bright with some lovely artwork and many easy words.

Tbh from what you have said I wouldn't be too concerned. As was said above, she is signalling to you and is showing understanding so the words will come however I know it's not easy to not worry so if you want me to dig out the details of the therapist we used let me know.

Kintarō Hattori

Hi Business Cat,

Many thanks for the long detailed reply, I certainly appreciate it. Really I'm not too concerned with her development myself, it's more coming from Mam who's stressing about it. I suppose she did get off to a late start physically but she's flying along now and we think it won't be long before she's walking. She had started babbling initially some time ago but then stopped around the time we tried putting her into creche, which turned out to be a disaster.
At 17 months old now she points, waves to kids/people and reaches which is great. She also knows all the usual like the animals in her books, flowers, all sorts of vehicles, where her head, nose, eyes, knees, fingers/toes etc are. I can talk to her in English, her Mam in Polish and she understands both. So I'm not too worried about that- it's really just that aside from laughing, crying and the occasional coo/squeak she's not all that verbal.

I think with myself, I probably am a little too full on and eager with her, I'm sure I could scale my enthusiasm back a little and watch her cues more. I'd read not to mimic what they said and rather speak to them properly so that's something I can easily change.
She loves books and has tons of them and they seem to be her favourite 'toy' by a country mile and we both take the time to read them to her and question her about what's happening in them. I'll certainly look into the books you've suggested.

One thing to query is that we let her watch almost no television/YouTube etc. Is this a good/bad thing? As on the rare occasion we watch stuff with her she's very very upset when we bring it to an end, so maybe it should be something that she gets say once a week but in small doses or continue as we are with very little?

I might just send you a pm shortly BC.

shesty

She knows all her animals in books etc?Honestly, she sounds fine.The two year PHN check up is just pointing at animal pictures in a book and seeing what the child can say.Definitely talk to her, don't anticipate what she wants, try to get her to say cup, ball etc,(or even just "please" or "that"!!) and speak to her with proper words.
Like I said there are private speech therapists who you can contact, the work will be mostly for you though.And most likely they will all say the same thing to you .... no screens.So I wouldn't worry a bit about that.Kids learned to talk long long before screens ever existed.They are not necessary, unless the child has a problem where they are absolutely non-verbal with no likelihood of becoming verbal, or have a disability of some sort.There are no tablets, youtube or anything else in our house (bar the bit of TV) and our pair never shut up.

shesty

Kintaro did you get a green card when the baby was born, with what they shouldbe doing re: sounds and hearing up to age 5?If you have that, take a look at it as it is a very good guide.

Kintarō Hattori

shesty wrote: »

Kintaro did you get a green card when the baby was born, with what they shouldbe doing re: sounds and hearing up to age 5?If you have that, take a look at it as it is a very good guide.

I'm sure we did but the other half would have filed it away somewhere, I'll see if I can dig it out.

Many thanks for all your advice.

Liam McPoyle

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

Hi Business Cat,

Many thanks for the long detailed reply, I certainly appreciate it. Really I'm not too concerned with her development myself, it's more coming from Mam who's stressing about it. I suppose she did get off to a late start physically but she's flying along now and we think it won't be long before she's walking. She had started babbling initially some time ago but then stopped around the time we tried putting her into creche, which turned out to be a disaster.
At 17 months old now she points, waves to kids/people and reaches which is great. She also knows all the usual like the animals in her books, flowers, all sorts of vehicles, where her head, nose, eyes, knees, fingers/toes etc are. I can talk to her in English, her Mam in Polish and she understands both. So I'm not too worried about that- it's really just that aside from laughing, crying and the occasional coo/squeak she's not all that verbal.

I think with myself, I probably am a little too full on and eager with her, I'm sure I could scale my enthusiasm back a little and watch her cues more. I'd read not to mimic what they said and rather speak to them properly so that's something I can easily change.
She loves books and has tons of them and they seem to be her favourite 'toy' by a country mile and we both take the time to read them to her and question her about what's happening in them. I'll certainly look into the books you've suggested.

One thing to query is that we let her watch almost no television/YouTube etc. Is this a good/bad thing? As on the rare occasion we watch stuff with her she's very very upset when we bring it to an end, so maybe it should be something that she gets say once a week but in small doses or continue as we are with very little?

I might just send you a pm shortly BC.

Honestly, she sounds to be tipping along fine but I know that when she had the LMT that ones senses are particularly heightened. My neice at 2 had very little words but at nearly 4 now she doesnt shut up. 're tv / tablets, little man never watches it and if it's on in the background and he focuses too much on it then we turn the tv off.

On the mimicking, we saw the public SLT and the private one and they both said to repeat back what ever gibberish he was saying.

ncmc

Some great info on this thread. My 16 month old is also speaking very little bar mama, dada etc. He also isn't walking yet, but can cruise furniture. There are some great tips like repeating back to him etc. I'll definitely try that.

fits

We are doing a course run by the HSE for parents based on the Hanen It takes two to talk programme. But there’s a book of the same title also if you are looking for a reference.