Speech Evaluation

Last Friday, I took Duncan to see the speech therapist for his Speech Evaluation. The session was held at the Speech Therapy room at one of the Elementary Schools near here.

There are two speech therapists who work at the school but the therapist who saw Duncan was not one of them. She was sent by the School District to evaluate Duncan.

I wished I had taken a video of the session. It was interesting to see how the evaluation was done. At the end of the session which was only about half an hour long, the therapist told me what the problem with Duncan's speech was.

There was nothing physical wrong with his mouth or tongue but what he had was a carry over from whence he first learned to talk. He doesn't make the sounds that come from the throat like the hard 'g' sound and the 'k' sound. Instead he focused on the frontal sounds like the 't', 'f'' and 'd'.

So instead of saying 'cup', he would say 'tup'. Instead of saying 'go', he would say 'do'. And instead of saying 'truck' he would say 'fuck'.

When it comes to multi-syllabic words he would drop the unstressed sounds. Instead of saying 'computer' he would say 'puter'.

The therapist will write a report which she said will take two to three weeks for it to get to me, and in that report she will propose that Duncan attend two speech therapy sessions a week together with some other kids who have the same speech problems.

I look forward to Duncan starting with this speech therapy. If he does not go to the speech therapy then he will continue to speak the way he does for that much longer. According to the speech therapist it is better to correct the problem now because when he starts elementary school it will be less frustrating for him to get himself understood.

I totally agree. Thank goodness for free speech therapy sessions!