Speech therapy

[whipping girl in 07]

I'm not sure if this really belongs on the general nursing forum, but I want as many people as possible to see and and respond if they have an opinion.

My son is 5 and just started kindergarten. He was getting in trouble a lot initially, but we seem to have gotten past that. He did not pass his hearing screening and the school sent home a note saying I needed to take him to his doctor and get a recommendation for what needs to be done. A couple of weeks later (the day before Ian's dr appt) they sent home another note saying that he needs a speech therapy evaluation. I talked to his teacher about it and she said that because he didn't pass the hearing screen, he needed speech therapy evaluation. They sent home a questionnaire for me to fill out in regards to hearing loss, history, developmental/birth problems, etc. I did not fill it out and send it back to school yet. When I took Ian to the dr, he agreed that a speech therapy evaluation wouldn't hurt anything. So he wrote a Rx and the evaluation was today at the hospital I work at. The therapist said that Ian had some pronunciation problems and some hearing loss in the right ear at the lower frequencies. She said twice a week for a few months would probably be enough to "break the bad habits" of pronunciation he had formed.

I do not want my son being pulled out of class at school for speech therapy. I would rather take him to visits myself and pay for it myself. I can make time to do it and my insurance covers it (and even if it didn't I could afford it). My husband is in agreement with me.

I feel that if they start doing it at school they will never stop, even if he no longer needs it. And I don't like the idea of his being different, taken out of class either during instruction time (which is needed for him to succeed) or fun time (which might be seen as punishment).

What does anyone else think of this?

[Just Angi]

Konni,

My daughter was in speech therapy at school for K-5 and 1st grade. She really enjoyed her time in ther because she was not the only one there. She is imtimadated easily, but no one at school ever picked on her for going to speech therapy. Good luck with the way you chose to go about it for your son.:)

[semstr]

Hi Konni,

My daughter was in speech-therapy in Kindergarten and 1. grade (that's from 4-6 years old, here), because she not only had a lisp, but couldn't say the rolling R. (wouldn't be a problem in an English-spoken country, but here it is.)

She went there 2x a week, together with five other kids from her group. They had great fun together and now all of them speak perfectly well.

Take care, Renee

[whipping girl in 07, RN]

Thanks to everyone to replied to my post. I really appreciate all your input and the stories you shared with me. It's helped me make a decision about Ian.

Our insurance only pays for 30 visits a year, so if we get started and it ends up that he doesn't seem to be getting enough out of the private sessions, we will add the ones at school as well. I think I would prefer he be with the therapist one-on-one, so private seems to be the way to go at this time. However, if we need it, the school program is there and I now have some more positive views of it rather than the negatives that I remember from when I was a child.

If I sound a little discombobulated, I didn't get much sleep yesterday and I'm back at work tonight.