Re: Re: how did you get appropriate therapy from EI or school?

[Guest guest]

Well this is very VERY encouraging to hear. You are very VERY lucky to have such

dedicated public school professionals working with your child.

That has NOT been our experience and that of many others who have battled the

school district for years to get appropriat eservices and when they finally got

them on paper--the mom later learned the child was getting a weird mixture of 5

minute attention as part of group therapy becuase there was just no time to fit

the 80 kids  that needed therapy each week in that school. So she may have done

10 minutes per session working with just this apraxic child, and maybe a month

later worked with him again 1:1 as she could fit it in, but most of the time the

kids were all in the room and she worked with them at the same time and my

friend only learned this after a few years of not much progress, when the child

was finally able to tell her and she pulled it out of the SLP who explained that

this was all they could do given their caseload.  The therapist's words.

Other school districts flat out do not acknowledge they can work 1:1 with

apraxic kids, they say their job is to work on educational aspects and group

therapy is all they can offer with individual " emphasis " as needed but refuse to

even admit they do not have therapists trained in motor planning and just work

on articulation along with all the rest.

I've heard more stories like this than I care to think of, and the successful

ones are usually after many years of problems and mediation and due process

where the child was not making progress and the parents hired a lawyer etc.  And

again, even then, there are no guarnatees that the actual implementation will be

as it is on paper, if the SLPs are not trained in motor planning techniques, the

apraxic child will simply not progress.

So I don't know where you live and what school district has 4 apraxia trained

SLPs, but in the Bay Area it is hard to even find SLPs in private practice who

know how to treat apraxia, particularly in young children who cannot be made to

sit down and drill- drill- drill with cards and sounds until they get it right. 

Theree local apraxia experts declared they could not work with my child after

they saw that she refused to follow adult directed activities and did not comply

and cried and went under the table whenever they pressed for her to say

something. it took a very patient and experienced PROMPT SLP to finally get her

to even attempt talking.  the first ones were telling us she needed ABA and RDI

and " a more child directed approach " they said--and mind you these were local

experts who had written books on apraxia, but who just didn't know or care to

see what it takes to engage a non-verbal young child.   So the right fit with

the SLP is another

real importnat thing or young children will sometimes just not respond to

therapy at all.

So we've had our share of failures with privat SLPs too, and we've not worked

with school SLPs yet,--but the one who evaluated my daughter said she did not

have training in apraxia, barely knew what it was, said she had gone to one

motor planning seminar once, and in spite of all the letters/reports from

doctors and evaluators and the detailed lists I kept of my daughters

communication attempts--she had less 15  words at the time and not too

functional or consistent, not used at will, not understandable out of context

etc. her apraxia was very severe, yet the school district kept talking about

articulation remediation, and in the initial IEP report did not even mention

anything about motor planning problems and her apraxia or the remediation

needed-- I had to insist that she put in the ASHA definition and recommendations

to educate the rest of the IEP team about apraxia --I appealed to her as a

professional and requested that she present and include the

ASHA definition which she then did at my request--but still provided not goals,

no remediation strategy etc. . And a year later when they finally got around to

offering services--but only one out of the 3 sessions was supposed to be 1:1 and

as I explained I saw what the SLP in the class who was working primarily with

ESL students considered 1:1--she had the kids in two different corners of the

room and worked with them at the same time, focusing on each for a few

minutes--and that was the 1:1 remediation she offered my daughter, in a room

with many other kids who were there primarily for language /ESL issues, not

speech per se.. 

Not exactly what I would consider appropriate remediation for an apraxic child

who could barely say mama at 3.5.

Anyway, our experience with the school district has been horrible, and I have

accumulated more stories like this than succesful ones.  So it is best that

parents know both sides before they decide where to invest their efforts. Most

parnets I know do both school and private speech since the school is either not

enough and/or not the right kind and quite a number of them ultimately end up

homeschooling and just going private all the way to not have to deal with the

school frustrations and inadequacies.    No, it doesn't have to be like this,

and it shouldn't but the battle is uphill more often than not when school

districts do not even acknowledge that the child has apraxia and refuse to

consider the individual needs, citing rules and regulations they can't back up

in writing, but pull out and scare parents off nevertheless whenever the parent

wants their child's diagnosis to be taken seriously. 

Many of the parents who have battled the school districts requesting appropriate

services and accommodations have regretted the time, energy and effort spent

because in the end, even after winning at due process  and getting even more

than they wanted initially ---they realized the school was just not equipped to

deliver. So this is what the parents need to assess--the school resources and

willingness of school staff to accommodate the child's individual needs, even

beyond what is written in the IEP. Parents cannot always be there to verify and

the child in most cases cannot report back.  There may be SLPs out there as

you've had the good fortune to meet, but by no means is this the rule or the

most common occurrence in the public school setting.

I'm not trying to discourage Iveta, but if she expects 4  1:1 sessions per week

with an experienced motor planning trained SLP from her school district--it just

may not be that easy to come by--it's something difficult to set up even in

private practice if the child goes to school and can only attend late

afternoons, so the better prepared the parents the easier it ewill be to maek

the best of the existing resources, be they public or private. 

Good luck to all!

-Elena