Guest guest Posted January 6, 2008 Report Share Posted January 6, 2008 This is a tough one. I am going to throw it out there but many will argue with the idea. The thing that helped my son speak the most was steroids.  Dr. Chez in Chicago put my son on steroids for approx 1 year. He didn't have most of the side effects most people talk about. However, at 3 years old we went in 1 month, barely 4 words we were working very hard to get out, to at least 25 words in 1 month! I have tried everything there is to try, traveled all over the country for this treatment and that, and the only thing that is different from my son than many that don't speak is steroids. I don't know if I would believe it if it didn't happen for my son. Now saying that, he is now 9, still autistic, but can very much communicate, is now attending Mood Bell for intensive language therapy.  He has a huge vocabulary, but still has trouble structuring more complicated sentences.  So we have still a long way to go. But he is improving rapidly at the school, and is definately speaking in 4-5- word sentences. Just so you know , my son was diagnosed as Severely autistic. Now, he would be diagnose as Mild to Moderate. Will he ever lose his diagnosis, I doubt it. But the closer I can get means a better quality of life for him. Of all the things I have tried, Steroids have made the biggest improvement in my son's speech. Sheri Steffens Re: Re: Hope for speech I was told a few months before my son turned five that he would probably never speak because he had no words. I was crushed, but felt that I had to push it at least for a little while longer. What if they were wrong? Well, I hired a speech therapist and she came once a week for an hour. My son babbled a lot but didn't have any real words. She tried so hard with him to have him repeat a word or sound and you could see him looking at her mouth and trying to figure out how to do what she was doing but he just couldn't. I was hanging out with my son one day and heard him do one of his stimmy sounds " EI, EI " which he would say over and over to himself for fun. I started saying " EI, EI " also and he sort of stopped and looked at me and he smiled. We did that sound together for a while and then would do it on and off over the next few days. Then I tried to initiate this fun game by saying " EI, EI " first. When I did it, he laughed and then he did it. Finally! Repeating!!!! I told the speech therapist and she said it was a big breakthrough. She was also able to get him to repeat that sound. I felt like this was the beginning of something big. Then she left to go on early bed rest (she was pregnant) and I felt so depressed. Here we were with a breakthrough and our speech therapist had to quit. While waiting to hire another SLP (not so easy to find ones that will come to your house and have experience with autism in my area), I decided that since my son knew the song " Old Mac " that I would sing it to him and pause at the part where it goes " EI, EI, O " and see what would happen. Guess what? He filled it in! I laughed and praised and did it over and over to make sure it was not a fluke. He laughed too and I could tell that he was pleased with himself. Everyone who worked with him was astonished and we all praised him and clapped and cheered when he did his " EI, EI " fill in for the song. I started leaving out the part about " on this farm he had a ..... " and he said cow. More claps and cheers. He was almost five and a half at that point. He is now seven (just turned seven a few months ago) and he still isn't a fluid speaker. He can say words (if I point at a pig and say " what's that? " he will say " pig " , etc.), but he doesn't talk in sentences. Well, except " I want juice " or " I want chips " which he knows he has to say in order to get them and we worked on that a lot. He has great motor planning trouble (I believe he is apraxic) and though he tries very hard, it is tough for him to properly pronounce words when there is more than one word together. " I love you " is " I wuh you " , although if he tries hard to say just " love " on it's own it is much clearer. The fact that he will say things spontaneously, " I want video " or " ball " to indicate he wants to play catch, is huge. We feel very blessed and lucky. I never thought I would hear " Mommy " , let alone some of the other words he can now say. It has shown me that he understands a lot more than we thought too. And while he will never be conversational, we are still doing speech once a week to get his articulation shaped up and to hopefully push him (in a good way) to use language more and more. You never know! If I had listened to the speech therapist who told me his chances of speaking were next to none, I wonder if he would be using any language at all right now. I encourage you to try. Step up your efforts if you have given up. I followed all the advice about trying to get speech going from books and experts and none of it worked, so I know your frustration. I spent thousands of dollars on speech when he was two and three and it felt like I was throwing $100 bills out the window of my car as I drove to each appointment. I stopped taking him when he was three and a half because we were getting nowhere. But once I was told he couldn't and he wouldn't, I had to try one last time. If your child babbles, see if any of the babbling is a repetitive sound. If so, try to join in and see if your child notices. I know it may have been a fluke for us. Just something that happened that led to something else. But it happened so please don't lose hope. I wish you all the best and I will pray for you and your son. Rhoda Re: Hope for speech Our son just turned seven and still has no words. Lots of stories are heard about kids talking later on in life. Anyone personally have inspirational words for us to keep faith that one day he will say something? Thanks and God Bless. Sincerely, Juarez, M.S., Marriage and Family Therapist Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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