4 year old and speech?

[DocsNemesis]

I'm a little worried about my 4 year olds speech. To start off-yes, I will be taking her to the pediatrician and asking her as well. It'll be a few weeks before we can get in though and I'm assuming (based on the past) that we'll be sent in for a speech evaluation which will take another month or so to get into. I'm hoping for a little insight in the meantime

My dd turned 4 in September. She is still very hard to understand even by us and that doesn't seem right, does it? I know some of it is normal 4 year old speech-certain sounds together are common for a 4 year old to have trouble with-but there seem to be a lot of words beyond that that we have a hard time understanding. She gets so frustrated with us when we can't understand her, I feel bad!

Now, her sister was also difficult to understand. When she was 3, she had a speech eval and was found to be ahead in comprehension but very behind in actual speech. However, she also had pretty bad tongue tie and we assumed this was the primary problem. She had to have her tonsils out as well so we had her tongue clipped while she was under general for that. I think she was about 4 at that point and her speech gradually improved. I assumed it was because the tongue tie was fixed, so she learned how to re pronounce those words over the next year or so and that was that. Now I'm not so sure...my now 4 year old doesn't have tongue tie and seems to be at about the same point her sister was now.

So...if I'm right and she is behind, given the history with her sister, would you have a full evaluation, get her into speech therapy and all of that...or would you just see where it goes at this point? Her sister never had any speech therapy and got better on her own, but I know that doesn't mean her sister will be the same. I admit I'm a little worried about her doing speech therapy because well...she is VERY stubborn and argues over everything. I can imagine trying to get her to do any sort of therapy is going to be a constant struggle. My stubborn little girlie

Anywho, what would you do?

[kimellett]

My now 5.5 year old ds had/has speech issues. We didn't like his first speech teacher (when he was 3) LOVED his teacher when he was 4, don't like his current one. However, speech teachers somehow manage to get kids to do stuff they'd NEVER do for their parents. DS is improving, but still has a long way to go. We'll keep him in speech as long as we feel he is making progress and benefiting. That is the case now. I'd say start the speech therapy, give it a good 3-4 months and re-evaluate if it's doing what you want and how your dd is handling it.

[s_kristina]

My oldest was in speech and also made wonderful progress there. Her evaluation was done through the school district and all speech classes were also through the school district. Here is a link on what is normal and different ages http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/acquisition.html

[lindberg99]

I wouldn't bother with the pediatrician. My 5 yo DS had an evaluation at the college speech dept and they recommended therapy for him. I had him at the nurse practitioner for a kindergarten check up a few months later and she said "His speech sounds very good!" She was completely surprised that he was going to get speech therapy. They just aren't around the kids long enough to notice too much about speech I think.

Go through the school district, like PP said. Most school districts have some type of preschool that will also offer speech therapy, OT, PT, etc. for preschoolers. Is your DD in preschool anywhere? If so, the teachers should know who to contact about the speech issue. If not, you can probably find out by calling an elem. school or looking on the school district web page.