My oldest is almost 7. He started speech therapy for articulation when he was 3 and did it until almost 5. His articulation went from no one but me being able to understand him to incredible. He has a high pitched voice though and always has. It's the sweetest little voice though. If I remember correctly, it's prosody. When he was in kindergarten, they did a speech evaluation for all the kids and this was brought up along with his fluency because he had a lot of "um" and "un" fillers. We didn't want to do an IDP through the school, so we took him back to his speech therapist. He's been going every week for a year now. He was re-evaluated by her last month and met all of his goals for fluency, but the pitch isn't any better.
Per her and the pediatrician's suggestion, he's gone to a pediatric neurologist (he had some other things going on and they wanted to rule out cerebral palsy or some other thing like that because he stopped breathing right after birth) and she said it was idiopathic, no good reason. We went to an ear, nose and throat specialist and he went in with a scope to see if there were any cysts or anything on the vocal chords. There weren't. That doctor said we really want to help him get his pitch lower because he's stressing out his vocal chords. When he talks, you see all the little tendons in his neck stick out and his voice gets kind of raspy sometimes because of it.
The speech therapist has figured out a couple things. One, he doesn't breathe well when he speaks. It's as if he takes a giant breath and tries to get it all out. Two, when he's laying on his back, his pitch is great. He told her that maybe he could have a scooter to lay on to go through his day. She told him maybe we'd better find some ways for him to find that voice when he's standing up.
I feel like we're kind of at a loss here. It's a once a week appointment that costs us $80 a month. If we need to do it and he's improving, it's totally worth it though. It's just with the other issues, we were seeing some improvement and then he reached his goals and things were fine.
Is anyone aware of anything we can do at home to help him with the pitch? I love his speech therapist. She's great with him and we have a good relationship since he has seen her for half of his life. She told me when we started the second time though that she has lots of experience with the fluency but not with the pitch, but said she'd do some research on what to work on with him. She's kind of baffled right now too. There isn't anyone else in the area that has more experience than her and I really like her anyway. If there is something I can do at home to help out though, I'd like to do that. It may lessen how long we need to go. Thanks!
Per her and the pediatrician's suggestion, he's gone to a pediatric neurologist (he had some other things going on and they wanted to rule out cerebral palsy or some other thing like that because he stopped breathing right after birth) and she said it was idiopathic, no good reason. We went to an ear, nose and throat specialist and he went in with a scope to see if there were any cysts or anything on the vocal chords. There weren't. That doctor said we really want to help him get his pitch lower because he's stressing out his vocal chords. When he talks, you see all the little tendons in his neck stick out and his voice gets kind of raspy sometimes because of it.
The speech therapist has figured out a couple things. One, he doesn't breathe well when he speaks. It's as if he takes a giant breath and tries to get it all out. Two, when he's laying on his back, his pitch is great. He told her that maybe he could have a scooter to lay on to go through his day. She told him maybe we'd better find some ways for him to find that voice when he's standing up.
I feel like we're kind of at a loss here. It's a once a week appointment that costs us $80 a month. If we need to do it and he's improving, it's totally worth it though. It's just with the other issues, we were seeing some improvement and then he reached his goals and things were fine.
Is anyone aware of anything we can do at home to help him with the pitch? I love his speech therapist. She's great with him and we have a good relationship since he has seen her for half of his life. She told me when we started the second time though that she has lots of experience with the fluency but not with the pitch, but said she'd do some research on what to work on with him. She's kind of baffled right now too. There isn't anyone else in the area that has more experience than her and I really like her anyway. If there is something I can do at home to help out though, I'd like to do that. It may lessen how long we need to go. Thanks!
