My 5yo needs speech therapy

karen · Post by **karen** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 2:17 pm

After Reino's 5-year neuvola and doctor appointments, it has been recommended that he get Finnish speech therapy. His strongest language is definitely English and there is the idea that he won't be able to follow instructions in a Finnish school. Any thoughts, ideas, experiences to share?

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superiorinferior · Post by **superiorinferior** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 2:20 pm

Sounds like xenophobe bollocks to me.

Why would he need speech therapy to be able to understand others?

Rosamunda · Post by **Rosamunda** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 2:24 pm

Well, not sure I would word it like him, but I agree, speech therapy won't help him understand Finnish.

Are you sure they mean "speech therapy" ??? I think you got the term wrong.

karen · Post by **karen** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 2:35 pm

I didn't go to his appointment this morning because I was in school, but my husband told me it was speech therapy. I'm looking at the papers he was given and the lääkärin suositus is "Puhe terapeutin arvio. Piirtämijen harj. Tarv. toimintaterapeutti"

I knew that he needed to work more with a pencil, so that wasn't news. The brochure he was given has a name underlined and her title is Toimintaterapeutti, which I would guess is occupational therapy.

Richard · Post by **Richard** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 2:39 pm

Speech therapy is for when the child cannot pronounce certain sounds.

If it is just that his Finnish is not as advanced as it should be for his age, that's a different matter entirely, and if true He needs more exposure to Finnish IMO.

I have a gut feeling that in this overly-educated land that those in the chld advice business have a tendency to over diagnose problems. I have no idea if this is the case with Reino, but you and your husband have should trust your own instincts on this one IMO.

karen · Post by **karen** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 2:46 pm

I'll have to talk to my husband about this. We were in a hurry when we discussed this and I hadn't seen the paper yet. There is more on the paper about therapy and suomenkieli.

I don't interact with Reino in Finnish, but I do take full responsibility for his English. My mil told me yesterday that he does make mistakes in his Finnish. She said it would be the equivalent in English of saying "I be" rather than "I am."

Rosamunda · Post by **Rosamunda** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:14 pm

In France my son was given help with reading (he is dyslexic) by somebody called an "orthophonist" which is.... speech therapist. The French don't really have a word for the specialists who give remedial help to kids (be it reading, writing or speaking). So it could be the same case here: "speech therapist" is just the traditional title of someone who helps kids with any kind of development stuff, not just rolling their Rs.

My advice would be.... go with it. Any extra professional tuition that a child can have is worth having (my son used to loooove his phonemic awareness sessions, much better than school....) and is usually done in a fun way. If the neuvola has a hint there may be some kind of a problem (whatever it is, maybe they are not even sure of the source of the problem themselves) then the sooner it is treated the better. My son's dyslexia was diagnosed when he was 6 and with some fairly intensive help he became a confident, happy reader (but still has some problems writing). If any kind of learning / development glitch goes undiagnosed it gets MUCH harder to correct as the child gets older.

Having remedial support or special ed in school (eg after 7 yrs) is a much more sensitive issue for the kids (and also usually for the parents). Get it over with now.

Does he have much contact with Finnish speaking kids his own age? Does he ever have to use Finnish in his play time?

karen · Post by **karen** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:19 pm

He has been in a Finnish daycare since he was 11 months old.

sinikettu · Post by **sinikettu** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:20 pm

Tadpole'sMommy wrote:I'll have to talk to my husband about this. We were in a hurry
English of saying "I be" rather than "I am."

Olen...?

But...no need to hurry...both you and hubby go and talk to whoever made this diagnosis and make sure there is no miss-understanding.
There is a big difference between a 5 YO making gramatic mistakes and having problems with pronuciation.

But usualy both correct themselves as the child developes.
My youngest..now adult used to amuse us with his habbit of replacing T and Cs, with D when he was 4- 5.
Living on a farm...Tractors were Dractors and Cows were Dows...bulls were daddy dows. He lost this habbit before he was 6.

Speach therapy is usualy resereved for problems such a stammering.
I tend to agree with Richard..."the chld advice business have a tendency to over diagnose !"

Hank W. · Post by **Hank W.** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:21 pm

Maybe you guys would need to relax yourselves before you need therapy.

It says clearly in the paper: "puheterapeutin arvio", means "opinion from a speech therapist" not "speech therapy". So there is no "diagnosis that Reino needs speech therapy". The neuvola quack wants a 2nd opinion from the specialist who deals with language development, that happens, as Penelope quite accurately guessed, is called a "speech therapist".

Correcting speech faults, such as not being able to say 'R' or 'S' that are the most common ones, is just a fraction of what a 'speech therapist' does in Finland. Its more holistic approach to do with general language development especially with young kids, a 'speech therapist' for example diagnoses and helps with dyslexia, and its got nothing to do with *speaking*.

karen · Post by **karen** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:24 pm

As I said, we were in a hurry (and having an argument) so he only briefly told me what the doctor said. I found this paper and was making guesses. And now that you mention it, he did say that Reino needs to go for an assessment.

Hank W. · Post by **Hank W.** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:34 pm

As Reino apparently has English as his "better language" the "speech therapist" may come up with some excersizes to get him "up to par" with Finnish, as the Finnish skills the neuvola doc expects are based on a comparison with Finnish-speaking kids the same age. Its nothing to worry about so much at this point - the speech therapist probably will have some pretty good tricks up the sleeve, I mean they have dealt with bilingual kids before (usually its Finnish/Swedish as the language pair in Finland) so its nothing extraordinary. Home excersizes, some one-on one sessions, a combination like that usually.

Rosamunda · Post by **Rosamunda** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 4:06 pm

Tadpole'sMommy wrote:He has been in a Finnish daycare since he was 11 months old.

Well, the neuvola probably took this into account. If he has been in daycare that long then one would expect him to have about the same level of Finnish as any monolingual Finnish child. As I said before, I would go with it, if only to get a full assessment of the situation.

Hank W. · Post by **Hank W.** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 4:13 pm

Yeah, don't be a xenophobe. Go with the Finnish bollox

RA · Post by RA » Tue Oct 10, 2006 9:23 pm

My god-daughter had a similar problem. Her mother spoke Spanish to her and her father Finnish. She went to an English daycare. What happened was that English ended up being the weakest language for her and they dropped it and she transferred to a Finnish daycare. She started daycare at 3 years old. When she transferred to the Finnish daycare, she began the speech therapy. Kids usually begin school at 7 but she had to delay a year, she wasn't ready languagewise. Now she's in the second grade and is doing really well. She had speech therapy all through daycare and through the first grade.

I think one of the problems was that they didn't do much reading at home In any of the languages. As for the English, neither of the parents speak English as a first language and both speak broken English (neither of the two has had any schooling in English and have both learnt English on the'street') and no-one (except me really and I'm like over 300km away) in their circle of friends etc speaks English only Finnish or Spanish. So English was kind of doomed anyway.

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