I went to a fabulous presentation by Judy Montgomery on preschool early intervention strategies. She stated that SLP’s can only do so much in providing a child with quality language remediation during the short time that they see them. Studies have shown that preschool children whom have language based LD’s need more daily quantity time in not only the classroom, with the SLP but at HOME….Massive amounts of quantity time, (Quality isn’t enough), quantity is the key here…Quantity time spent listening to stories, discussing the stories, Quantity time with music, rhymes, and phonemic awareness activities with lots and lots of repetition. Children are behind at preschool, then kindergarten and need intensive therapy and family involved intervention to even have a chance at making up for what they have missed starting from preschool! Which makes Early Intervention and family involvement the whole key to this saga….
Many parents don’t understand this concept, and I can testify from my own experiences with my own daughter and her langauge based LD’s that we have been behind the 8-ball since she was in preschool and I had no idea about what little I could do to assist her and I didn’t get involved until 3rd grade…Hindsight is 20/20.. Now I do and my advice to any parents that have young children in school to be as involved as you can be in your child’s remediation. So the reality here is that children with language based LD’s come into kindergarten already light years behind their normally developing peers. It isn’t just a school’s fault that they are behind, as there are many other factors that come into play but as parents we can be empowered to do what we can do to provide effective quantity intervention under the direction of a special education teacher or SLP.
Re: the importance of early intervention
Pattim,
I too agree. With some luck we did a lot of things right that have reduced the impact of my son’s language based LDs. He is very curious and we spent a lot of time reading to him way above grade level and his vocabulary is above grade level. We also gave him piano lessons.
But I see so many things I wish I had known then. Some of it I even see in all his preschool evaluations but was either so overwhelmed with information or didn’t ask enough questions to really understand what to do.
As we know too, it is hard to play catch up.
Beth
This is so true, Patti. Just thos weekend I emailed all the families with whom we travelled to China to tell them a little about Anna’s APD abd S/L services. I got about 3 emails back telling me that they had also had a child evaluated. One of them in particular said that she kept telling her husband and pediatrician that there was something wrong with their younger child’s speech, but they said, oh, wait another year. She did have the child tested at three and she did have significant problems and now goes to S/L therapy. Everything I’m reading about brain and learning research says frequent and intense practice is needed to remediate language disabilites, etc. That makes me crazy,though, because the most S/L service any child receives at my school is twice a week for 30 minutes.
Janis