Post by Keith on May 26, 2007 18:19:36 GMT -8
Wait a year after your child has started talking to see if s/he needs to pursue speech therapy. Speech therapy does help a lot but it doesn't mean your speech will improve a hundred percent. From kindergarten to fifth grade, I had to pursue speech therapy at school. I had caught a nasty case of pneumonia when I was about two years old which had almost killed me. My fever had a very high temperature and it affected by brain. I survived but at a cost.
Normally, children learn to speak at two or three years of age. Me, I didn't speak my first word until I was about four years old almost being five. It had really put me at a disadvantage. I couldn't even talk right. My speech was jumbled up. My words were slurred and dragged. Not many people could actually understand me. For most of my life, other students messed with me because of the way I talked. I couldn't help it. It had really affected my ability to communicate with others. For that reason, I remained quiet most of the time. But constantly being quiet put me at a disadvantage because it didn't help one bit with my speech. Instead, it made it worse.
I got picked on just about everyday because of the way I talked. I was branded as a "retard." Which is a very derogatory term. If you're child has problems making clear speech such as slurring, dragging words, speech impediments, or something, you should seek a speech therapist early on. Once you get to that early, it should help. Most elementary and middle schools should have classes to accomodate students with speech problems. You should talk to the school administrators about ways they can accomodate your child.
Speech therapists are there to improve a child's speech. In my case, I had to constantly repeat a bunch of sounds. Plus I would have to have my grandparents check my notebook everyday to make sure that I've been working on my speech. The speech teacher would make me go over a list of words every week to see if my pronounciation and my annunciation had improved. It helped a bit. But my family had recently immigrated from Vietnam during that time and were still learning how to speak English as well, so they weren't much help to me.
I would go through a series of sounds and sound combinations to make up words. We went through a series of single words, compound words, etc. When I went to middle, they didn't have any speech classes available. It was the same case when I was in high school. That put me at a disadvantage during most of my high school life. My speech had somewhat improved but not improved all that greatly.
Speech therapy helps, but if you want to help your child improve his/her speech, you're going to have to go the extra mile. Speech therapists can go so far. Parents are very instrumental to this important part of their child's development. Since there were no speech classes, I took up classes such as Army JROTC (Junior Reserve Officers Training Course) and drama. I could definitely write words but had a hard time pronouncing them. JROTC somewhat helped but the drama classes helped a lot because I had caring teachers.
Still, I didn't talk right upon graduation from high school. Around February 2001, I had enlisted in the reserves and went to basic training at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. It was still the same problem. However, I had a bunch of people in my company and my platoon that helped me out. Interestingly, when I got out of basic training, my speech had improved greatly. When talked to my buddies from basic on the phone, they were surprised to hear that my speech had improved a great deal.
It just shows that speech therapy helps a lot. But you have to go the extra mile. Both on the parts of the parents and the child.
www.helium.com/tm/266288/after-child-started-talking
Normally, children learn to speak at two or three years of age. Me, I didn't speak my first word until I was about four years old almost being five. It had really put me at a disadvantage. I couldn't even talk right. My speech was jumbled up. My words were slurred and dragged. Not many people could actually understand me. For most of my life, other students messed with me because of the way I talked. I couldn't help it. It had really affected my ability to communicate with others. For that reason, I remained quiet most of the time. But constantly being quiet put me at a disadvantage because it didn't help one bit with my speech. Instead, it made it worse.
I got picked on just about everyday because of the way I talked. I was branded as a "retard." Which is a very derogatory term. If you're child has problems making clear speech such as slurring, dragging words, speech impediments, or something, you should seek a speech therapist early on. Once you get to that early, it should help. Most elementary and middle schools should have classes to accomodate students with speech problems. You should talk to the school administrators about ways they can accomodate your child.
Speech therapists are there to improve a child's speech. In my case, I had to constantly repeat a bunch of sounds. Plus I would have to have my grandparents check my notebook everyday to make sure that I've been working on my speech. The speech teacher would make me go over a list of words every week to see if my pronounciation and my annunciation had improved. It helped a bit. But my family had recently immigrated from Vietnam during that time and were still learning how to speak English as well, so they weren't much help to me.
I would go through a series of sounds and sound combinations to make up words. We went through a series of single words, compound words, etc. When I went to middle, they didn't have any speech classes available. It was the same case when I was in high school. That put me at a disadvantage during most of my high school life. My speech had somewhat improved but not improved all that greatly.
Speech therapy helps, but if you want to help your child improve his/her speech, you're going to have to go the extra mile. Speech therapists can go so far. Parents are very instrumental to this important part of their child's development. Since there were no speech classes, I took up classes such as Army JROTC (Junior Reserve Officers Training Course) and drama. I could definitely write words but had a hard time pronouncing them. JROTC somewhat helped but the drama classes helped a lot because I had caring teachers.
Still, I didn't talk right upon graduation from high school. Around February 2001, I had enlisted in the reserves and went to basic training at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. It was still the same problem. However, I had a bunch of people in my company and my platoon that helped me out. Interestingly, when I got out of basic training, my speech had improved greatly. When talked to my buddies from basic on the phone, they were surprised to hear that my speech had improved a great deal.
It just shows that speech therapy helps a lot. But you have to go the extra mile. Both on the parts of the parents and the child.
www.helium.com/tm/266288/after-child-started-talking