Speech teacher to stop services?

[Judi]

My 6 year old grandson Sam is dx'd with Asperger's Syndrome. My daughter just had a reevaluation with Sam's Kindergarten teacher, and the speech teacher sees no need to continue working with Sam since his "speech" is okay. Speech is not Sam's problem-language is his problem. A parrot can talk but not communicate. That is Sam's problem. Wouldn't a speech teacher also be educated in language disorders or not necessarily? We are confused what to do here

Judi, Grandma to Sam

[taffie30]

I realize you wrote this post a while ago... but I was wondering what if anything happened? My son is nine years old and my exhusband and I just attended a parent teacher conference. When the meeting was almost over, his speech therapist joined us. She said, Cory has no idea why he is there. She has not seen one benefit thoughout the entire school year. She believes his communication problems are language based, not speech based. Since your post sounded so much like something I am experiencing, just wondered if you were able to resolve anything?

Thanks!
Tammy

[Judi]

Tammy-No resolution yet, but we're still working on it. We had Sam evaluated at Children's Hospital of Milwaukee last month, and the language patholigist there is writing a letter to the school saying Sam needs language therapy even though he "speaks" well. I just can't figure out why a speech teacher wouldn't have figured this out herself.

Judi
grandma to Sam

[taffie30]

I just returned from a visit with Cory's neurologist. He agreed with Cory's speech teacher that the speech therapy was not what Cory needed. I couldn't believe it. But what he said was... there are many speech therapist and many language therapist and very few communication specialist. He recommended that Cory needed a communication specialist. He is capable of making the sounds that make up words, he simply does not use them in a manner that most people can understand, therefore he needs communication therapy in combination with language therapy, but not necessarily speech therapy. Does this make sense? He also said the Special School District provides this service. Fortunately, Cory is already receiving services from the Special School District even though he attends the regular school. Let me know how your situation progresses, it's nice to know my son is not the only person with this type of problem.

Thanks!
Tammy

[sabrina dreams]

Hi .I s your child in public school.All children does better work then the schools.Get them to help you out.My daughter is 4 and her speech is very odd parroit like but trys to answer you if you talk by just saying words out load.Her speech is very bad.But in school your child is to have speech by the law no child left behind act. they may not understand . but look in to severe receptive and expressive lang disorder .They may have that too.but if you are having problem paying look into the scott wright fountion they help pay and all children are with them.Good luck and get speech in and out of school to compare the work it may be the teacher teach thats the problem. nicole

[sabrina dreams]

speech and lang are the same .But you need all 3 to work.my daughter is the same.look into receptive and expressive lang disorder you may find you answer ther.It can go along with the autism my little on ehas si,rand ex.lang disoder and pddnos but the high functioning side The class should be a class that uses picture cures and signing to help.Here in flordia it callied ave class aa classs with other children with speech and lang disoder along with disables of all kinds. it helpied her in every way but my problem is that she should be in ac;ass for autism to help woth sensory part which in school she get 1 day for 1/2 hour which to me is not good.So I have all children therpy to compare .she get it in and out of school.ot,st and for awhile pt which to the school she won't get even if there motor planning in not there at all.

[puzzleman]

When my sons speech therapy was cut I made it an IEP issue. And took my lawyer with me. All of the sudden they could not answer my questions as to why the services were being cut, and his time in speech therapy stayed the same. Don't back down.

[mlwear]

The speech therapist should be able to address language issues. That is just ridiculous. Often therapist are in short supply so they try to get away with cutting services whenever they can get away with it. My son's primary issue for speech therapy is language use. Search pragmatics and find some specifics to discuss with the school. My son is doing better (thanks to therapy) but has troulbe with answering and asking wh- questions. He also has difficulty with directional words (up, down, beside, under, etc.) Then there is social language. We probably made an error in his IEP when we asked for an articulation eval. He has trouble with /th/ sound. So, this was written as a goal. Problem--that is now the focus. Psychologist says that is because articulation therapy is so much easier that they will fill his time with that instead and that we should just let the articulation work itself out as the language issues are of more importance.
Don't let them get away with it. Make them do their job. Read up a bit on language evaluations, pragmatic speech and special ed. law, then ask for an IEP meeting to be sure that his sessions are included. (My son has two half hour sessions per week which for HIM, I think is satisfactory as they also work on it in class.)