Dysnomia

Hi Chava,

I am a spec ed teacher that shares an office with a speech therapist…I asked her about this…we came up with these ideas:

First, the sp therapist suggested trying to look up Anomia or word finding.

Also, either at home or in thearapy? try to work on categories, naming things and repeating vocabulary so that the words will become easier to fiind.

Also, if you or the teacher could modify the game Scattergories or Out burst (I think there is a Junior version) this may help. For example, use spelling words or themes in the game to review or even learn new words(this may be something the speech therapsit could use). In class, it could be a fun review for all, especially if the teacher uses this in a center, to ensure your son has a turn and feels sucess in class.

Those were great ideas; thanks for sharing them.

Hello,
I am not a in the special education profession, but I do have a daughter with the same difficulty naming things. Do you remember the game Concentration that we played as kids? You clapped your hands and said, “The name of the game is (clap, clap)….Concentration..(clap, clap)….category..(clap, clap)…Fruits..(clap, clap)..And then everyone took a turn naming a fruit. Then you changed the category. The beat is rather slow so that there is no pressure to provide an answer, you just keep the beat until one is provided. My daughter with the word retrival difficulties is 6 1/2, and I have a daughter who is nearly 5. We play this game in the car, when they are lying in bed at night ect. They love it!

Thank you all for your responses. I am also checking into expressive language disorders, he seems to meet all those criteria.
Chava

Thanks for sharing this idea…it’s a dandy and I used to play it as a kid!

Teachers could use as a sponge activity when they have 4-5 minutes of extra time in small to medium size group.

I have a 4 year old little boy who has select mutism in my preschool class. He is also in the 20 to 30% of having a speech delay along with the select mutism. Does anyone have any ideas on how I could help him with his speech. He goes to a speech group on Thursdays but it does not seem to be helping. I as his teacher has gotten more out of him then the speech group. Please if someone could help I would appreciate it greatly.
Thank you , Lisa

Has the child been evaluated for language services needs? When you say speech delay, do you mean sound production or use of sounds in language? Or both?

Susan,
He goes to a speech group through ESD. He has both language delays that you mentioned. The best I could describe his speech is comparing it to a 18 month old. He mainly says bah for just about everything. He can say a few words but not many. He can say no, pease for please, yellow, pretzels. When he says yes it is bah. He will try to say a word if I ask, today I got him to say apple or pple after I asked him to watch my mouth. The speech group that he is in has only 2 children and from what I have heard none of the children talk So I do not know if he is really benifiting from the speech group or not. Mom has told me that he has an aug. board but just wants her to say the pictures and he will not say what the pictures are. I do not feel that an aug. board would do a bit of good. He at least is trying to say the words when I ask him to try. Like I said before he does not talk for his mother either. He is smart as a whip and does not seem to have any cognitive delays, his hearing is also fine. I would like to thank you for getting back to me so quickly. Now that I have given you some more information maybe you can give me some suggestions to help him.
Thank you, Lisa

First, I’m not a specialist in early childhood education nor speech/language. Far from it. However, my own child had very severe speech/language delays as a young child.

It sounds like your student is having both speech production problems and expressive language problems—but that receptive language is doing fine. (Can he respond to up/down, back/front kinds of thing? Follow simple directions?)

What do you do to help, model, model and give the child incentive to respond: wonderful facial expressions, smiles, hugs, play, play, play. Your multi-sensory idea is good, too. Let them have a mirror to see if their mouth looks like your mouth when they produce the sound.

With all delays, we meet them where they are and build from there. Sometimes brain just has “hitches” in the pathways (neural wiring) and we aren’t likely to catch that child up in a year—but we will keep them on an upward slope that might see them with semi-normal speech skills by age 9-10. Language skills are more complex.

Do lots of categories—make sure they are putting things into categories (fruit, animals, colors, etc.) If they can’t say a word, then try telling them the category (It’s a color like blue…right, yellow…the sun is yellow.)

Others may have more for you. Like I said, I’m no early childhood specialist.

I have a child that has had speech therapy for 7 years. He began when he was 3 because he would not talk. Communicated very well with hand signals. He had done very well with articulation except “th” and he continues to be seen at school for this articulation problem. He is also going to speech for language based problems - cannot repeat sentences when given, expressive language is not great. May have some problems with receptive; is also APD.

My concern and questions are: he seems to be regressing on some of his articulation. I am really noticing that he will say “wif” instead of “with”, the other day he put an”l” in the beginning of a word instead of “r” (can’t remember word now - just remember noticing and thinking “did I just hear this”. Is this really regression or is it bad speech habits. He knows when I point out his mistake and it seems to happen when he is excited or talking rapidly. He also responds “ok” and continues to talk completing his thought.

At the age of 10, I had thought we could just have speech services at school and stop the private. In the past, I have had private one on one and speech services in school in a small group of 2 or 3.