Diary Of An SLP: Pet Peeves

I’m sorry, but one of my biggest pet peeves as a Speech-Language Pathologist is when people think that a child who knows their numbers, colors, shapes and letters, is NOT behind and doesn’t need Speech Therapy. I see this all the time with parents and even with special education teachers and administrators.

As an SLP, I am concerned with how effective (the word we use as clinicians is “functional”), your child’s communication is. These are the things I am most concerned about as an SLP when it comes to your child’s speech and language skills:

• Can your child effectively and consistently tell you what they want or need?

• Can your child ask for help?

• Can your child tell you when they are in pain?

• Is your child able to recount an experience?

• Is your child able to tell you about what happened to them when you weren’t there?

Most children are able to do ALL OF THESE by preschool. If your child is not able to do some or all of these yet, I would recommend looking into getting a Speech and Language evaluation. These skills are very important and these are all things I work on with students in Speech Therapy.