Does this sound right????

[Guest guest]

So I organized my thoughts and sent Liam's school speech therapist an e-mail

inquiring about her comfort level and experience working with apraxia as well as

asking to set the wheels in motion to increase his weekly speech time from 60

minutes. She called to talk and here is some of what she told me

1) she attended her first apraxia conference in 1981 and not much has changed

since then. She said it is better to call it an oral motor disorder instead of

using that " scary apraxia " word.

2) her caseload (pre-school setting) is 1/2 to 2/3 kids with apraxia versus

speech delays. She divides speech problems into two main problems:

phonological rule disorders and apraxia. She was surprised that I read

somewhere recently that more speech therapists are treating kids with delays and

believes oral motor disorders are much more prevalent.

3) she doesn't like the PROMPT method as she views it as a technique that is

sold, therefore, questioning it's merit. She has her own techniques that have

worked for her.

4) Although Liam doesn't have any words (has been in speech since July 2010

with home therapy and with her since January 2011) she feels 1 hour a week is

adequate...as he is making progress towards his IEP goals. She said that if she

increased all of her kid's treatment time that they would all make more progress

but since Liam was making progress that was all she would advocate for

5) When I asked if she could recommend a private therapist that we could use to

supplement school therapy she said it was unethical for her to do????

She said she understood that I wanted him to have speech " now " and I corrected

her. I said I totally understood he wouldn't have speech " now " but I want to

make sure we are providing him with the most appropriate therapy.

I kinda feel like I just got bulldozed over. I do think she is a good therapist

and I know she adores Liam. She simply sounded like a therapist who works

within her boundaries and is very politically correct. For the remainder of

this year she is his therapist. I don't know for sure what will happen for next

school year. We talked about summer and she said he should qualify but it would

be probably 3 weeks only through the summer and his treatments would probably

only be 10 minutes because the goal is that he doesn't lose anything...not to

necessarily work for improvement. As I read Latetalkers I only skimmed the

chapters about being your child's advocate because I thought the school was so

helpful. I guess that was before I really had any questions. We are pursuing

private speech therapy through a name