Hellobee Boards

@josina: I am going to be honest here: everything sounds about right. Honestly! I am not an SLP but my son spent from age 2-4 in speech therapy because he was largely nonverbal. He would run around the office and not stay seated. He's 5.5 now and STILL can't make the k/c sound consistently but he has been exited out of speech and no longer qualifies for an IEP. I was floored when they told me that. I was like "but he still does, x,y,z!" And they told me that it was all in the range of normal. The k/c sound isn't a kindergarten sound that they expect them to master. So it might very well be that she just can't...yet. that's ok! I honestly, truly believe that stubborn kiddos like these will absolutely do it...on their terms. Lots of hugs because I know how stressful this is, but seeing my son who couldn't say his own name until 3+ to a 5.5 who uses words like "delicate, trajectory, and uncomfortable," I say it's a timing will vs skill issue.
On another note, how does she do with incentives? My son is not a people pleasure, so we had to resort to m&ms.

DS is 5 and is also in speech therapy. It’s SO hard. He’s generally a good listener and is cooperative but he really hates practicing his sounds. He does A LOT better when I don’t go in the room with them. His SLP says that’s really common 🤷‍♀️ So maybe try that if you’re comfortable?
DS doesn’t like not being good at something and gets anxious, embarrassed and frustrated. Also practicing sounds is boring. So maybe try reframing it for yourself. It’s not that she doesn’t want to, it’s that she can’t yet. Our SLP told us to just practice for 10ish min per day and be done. Don't correct him other than those 10 minutes. Otherwise it’s just too much. Also I am not into rewards charts, incentives etc because I don’t want to “bribe him” or make him reliant on extrinsic motivation but after talking to our SLP she said that you can’t be “intrinsically motivated” to make the correct speech sounds. Either you can or you can’t. We just need him to practice so it becomes habit. He’s not going to say “oh I’m going to decide not to say my S sound correctly because I don’t feel like it today”. That’s just not how it works. So now if he does his sounds for 10 minutes every day for a week, he gets a matchbox car and then if he does it for a month, a LEGO set. We try to do the reward after the fact rather than before. Speech is tough!! It’s so great you are addressing it now though!

@Chuckles: thanks! His SLP is progressing him through sound -> syllable -> word -> sentence -> stories -> conversation -> generalized speech. He’s at the word level right now practicing the sound in the beginning, middle and end of the words. So not quite ready for those yet!! Hopefully soon!

@Chuckles: ooh yeah! That’s a great idea. Thank you!!!

My 6 year old is just barely finishing up his k and g practice to move on to S combos and Vs.

The biggest difference for him was getting the right game. At first, his therapist would have him say something 5 times just to practice the word and we would do that at home probably once or twice a day. Kind of set the expectation that it was normal and not just the therapist doing it.

Now he's doing therapy virtually and there are several themed "is X under the Kite/Gate/Cat" games that he does great with. It took over a year for that sound to really click in his brain, but he is finally doing well there.