My now 4 1/2 year old son has been in the Washington County Early Intervention Program and now goes to a Child Alert Pre-School 3 days a week. He gets speech therapy 1 of those days per week. Since his birthday is in late October, he will not be attending Kindergarten this year, giving him 1 more year of preschool. (Which will probably be a good thing.) He was never tested for Autism, (My husband and I just didn't think he had it) but did test at a 25% delay in speech when he was almost 3 years old. He does not have any fine or gross motor skill delays, just speech. He understands when we talk to him and ask him to do things, he just doesn't answer us verbally. Mostly, he will just repeat what we asked him. He can repeat or talk along with t.v. shows, especially SpongeBob, but he won't carry on a conversation with us. I'm getting worried that he isn't getting enough or the right therapy. And that he won't be ready to start Kindergarten in 2008. Any advice from anyone that has gone through something similar would be greatly appreciated. Or any referals to different programs that I could get him involved in. Thanks so much!
Hi M...
Have you ever decide on sign language? There is something called the PEC's(I think I spelled it right) system which teaches children through objects, sign language, and speech all at the same time. Through the sign language they are also speaking out loud and gaing more confidence in their ability to communicate.
Yes, you need more ST! It maybe a scarey thing like the girls said above - but my son was thought to have a spectrum disorder at an early age but then was dx with Apraxia.
Quote from the the website:
Oral Apraxia and/or Verbal Apraxia?
Oral apraxia indicates that the child has difficulty with volitional control of nonspeech movement. For instance, perhaps the child will have difficulty sticking out and wagging their tongue when requested to do so. Or the child may have difficulty sequencing movements for the command, "Show me how you kiss, now smile, now blow". Verbal apraxia indicates that the child has difficulty with volitional movement for the production of speech. This can be at the level of sounds, syllables, words, or even phrases (connected speech). The motor struggle is most typically seen with sounds sequencing.
Or what I tell ppl is that the "wires" from his brain to his mouth need therapy to learn how to connect. Jonathan has been in speech for a couple of years and should be fine by 2nd grade.
For more info - do not hesitate to contact me or go to the site...
http://www.apraxia-kids.org/
Hi M..
We went through something similar with our son when he was getting ready for kindergarten. He is a Setember baby and missed the cutoff anyway. He is however mildly autistic with moderate to severe ADHD. He did have fine motor delays which have since been resolved, but will most likely have speech problems for most if not all of his academic career. At one point we believed he needed more speech than he was receiving in school and contacted Children's Hospital. You could go that route. Another thing we did was to take him to Huntington Learning Center in Peters. They were able to help him be prepared for kindergarten since neither one of us knew exactly how to teach him what he needed to know.
I don't know if that's the kind of info you're looking for, but I thought I'd share and hope to help you out.
Good luck to your family!!
B.
HI Michelle.
I live in South Park and my son has PDD which is on the autism spectrum. He too had speech issues.. Autism Spectrum covers A LOT of area and because my son is only severe in some areas he got the lable of PDD.
He gets speech therepy at school and at Children's Therepy Center in Waterdam Plaza. Your school district is gonna eval your child before kindergarden. I had my child evaled at Children's hopital at 2 1/2. He was not combining words.
He is getting better but is a long road ahead for him.
Getting a eval is good because if he does get the lable of PDD he would qualify for other therepy to help him.
Good Luck
N.
He should be getting more speech therapy it should be like 3 times a week, I would ask your ped. for a referal to a developmental ped. they specialize in things like this. They would tell you where to turn and what to do. My daughter has autism she is at the lower end of the spectrum and i kept thinking i was doing something wrong but it has been alot of trial and error but because of the developmental ped and the school district my daughter is making great progress and has one mor year of pre k then she may even go main stream for kindergarden.
my son was very similar...especially the fact that he could repeat the television. i agree that he needs speech therapy more than once a week, the school district should be able to help with that. they helped him at head start and would send home papers for us to help him with. his dad also helped him a lot, he would do anything for dad so they would sit down and work on words. he was tested before kindergarten and was ok, he did have some help this year with reading in 1st grade but i think his problems is that he looses attention quickly if he's not interested in what they are doing. he reads at home well when it is something he wants to read. i would talk to the school district or even the head start/preschool. he was taught i think 3 days a week at head start. there has to be something they can do about it, especially if you request it.also try not giving him things or kind of force him to talk, work with him with the words..we did that too, if he wanted somthing he didnt get it till he could say it or at least try to get close to it.
