Open Discussion about Speech Therapy
The Autism News | Special Guest
By Ghada H. M.
I have 2 questions related with Speech Therapy:
1. Does a Speech Therapist have the rights to tell the parents of a Non-Verbal child with Autism that he will NEVER be able to speak?
2. At what age should we consider speech therapy useless for a nonverbal child with Autism?
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Comments
Kurt Greene says: I feel that we as educators, ST and workers in the field of Sp. education should always hope for the best and prepare for the worst.. reality is just that and weather or not it was spoken by a ST or another profesional, it is something parents of autistic students must consider. Lets take all of the emotional feeling about the statement and pul the ST from under the bus. Maybe the way it was said should or had more compassion.
Charles Reames says: One of my co- workers was told that his grand sone has autism little to moderate. He is 4 years old and don’t talk. He also has a bigger then normanl head. They are doing a MRI next week on the boy. Anything I should tell him to do or get ready to hear. He realy is trying to keep his his child a 24 year old mother from worring to mush till reports are in.
Katy says: As a speech therapist myself, I don’t think it is about rights! It is about professional opinion. We have to be realistic in our assessments of the people we work with. Therapists don;t have the answer, none of us do. SLT’s work to promote communication skills in our clients AND equally promote communication skills in the environment as a whole. A child MAY never develop functional speech – that is to say – they may develop words or phrases but that are not used meaningfully, however they may develop other effective means of communication through sign, symbol, high tech AAC or a combination of all. Parents naturally focus on speech but I try when working with parents, teachers etc to help them see that communuication is about so much more that speech, this I hope gives them the sense that all is not lost if the young person does not ever develop speech. If they can get their message across and that message is understood then THAT is communcation.
I would prefer honesty than to being misled and given false hope. The sooner the child starts therapy the better for both the child and the parents.
If the child is diagnosed correctly then the parents will know what route to take on educating and treating the child.
Lastly be appreciative of having access to such treatment cos in other countries these proffesionals are not readily available
rocketfire says: Do you want her to lie to you? Being realistic is not “giving up.” Only dreams can be given up on. Professionals are not supposed to indulge in or promote an unrealistic prognosis. Therapists see thousands of clients from preschool through highschool and are quite accurate at predicting how a 3yr old will look 18.
Never give up hope. I don’t want a therapist “predicting” what my daughter might not be capable of. I am quite surprised many times, by what she says. I’ll wonder, “now where did she here that?” It’s going in, she just has a hard time getting it out! So, I wouldn’t want to lie to the therapist, so I would tell him/her they are not professional enough to service my child, and maybe they should find another line of employment?
