Life as a SEN mum

We’ve been through speech therapy now with both kids, and had very different experiences both times. It can be extremely stressful at times, with the long waits for appointments etc, it definitely wasn’t made easier with appointments done via zoom during the pandemic.

With both kids, the first step before we even received a referral to Speech and Language was to have a hearing test. I’ve mentioned this in the referral post so I won’t talk much about it.

The need for a hearing test may vary depending on your local authority, but it also depend on the child, we couldn’t even have James seen until 3 as there was no apparent issues with his hearing so the Health Visitor was hopeful he might just start talking at some point and that it definitely wasn’t hearing related. Which was later confirmed that his hearing was perfect and we were subsequently put on the waiting list for SALT.

With Charlotte, her hearing test was done earlier. She was talking a little bit, but never seemed to react to a lot of sounds and didn’t respond to her name. Again the test came back fine. But again she wasn’t able to see the speech therapist until she’d turned 3.

As with everything the wait for an initial appointment can seem like an eternity. The initial appointments varied massively. I’m not sure whether this was purely a change in their service or as a result of the pandemic.

When I received James’s first appointment I was invited along to meet the speech therapist, it was mostly to answer a few questions. From there we had several appointments at home, it was all very play based to see how he followed instructions and trying to encourage some basic words surrounding play. We were then given some PECS cards, with no explanation how to use them, so I had to do my own research and he was actually discharged before even making any progression. Needless to say that by time he was diagnosed and the speech therapist had her input we were beyond angry. The good news is we had a few more appointments after that, then when he started school he was given a new speech therapist who regularly goes into school to work on speech and communication.

Charlotte’s initial appointment was done at nursery. So I never had chance to meet the therapist, I did have a phone appointment for the “form filling” but most of the initial information and assessment was done with nursery’s input. Since then she was given a new therapist who would do regular appointments (whilst I’ve never been into her appointments, it happens to be James’s old speech therapist). Prior to diagnosis Charlotte also had appointments with a speech therapist who specifically deals with communication for autistic children, he was able to come up with different ways of communicating as PECS that worked well with James just didn’t really work with Charlotte and so a different approach was needed.

PECS

This is a common way of encouraging speech and communication. Picture Exchange Communication System, works by using picture cards to communicate needs and encourage understanding,

When we first started with James it was very basic, using pictures of his favourite toys. As well as simple pictures of every day actions to start to get him used to the process, as it progress the idea is that you can use these to create more complex requests. We never had to do that so much as the repetition did work and we were able to move directly into working on sentence structure without the cards,

Charlotte on the other hand just never showed an interest, however, her speech was slightly more advanced so maybe that’s why because she already had some of the basic language skills and therefore it was more a case of working on sentence structure,

What next

As far as James is concerned he continues to have regular appointments at school. Still focusing very much on pictures, although no longer for communication, but to work on sentence structure by explaining pictures and identifying certain aspects, for example “can you find the boy WITH/WITHOUT the ball”.

Charlotte we are following a very similar process, although we are currently waiting on her next appointment since starting school to see how much help she still requires etc.

Ways to Help

There are lots of tips for encouraging speech, a lot of them we all know and do from when they’re babies, so as reading to them, but the biggest help I’ve found is talking about everything, but really focusing on the details and particularly prepositions because these really help their understanding not just speech which is obviously so important