Did you go to public (i.e., a speech therapist provided by your school) or private (your parents took you off campus to a private speech therapist)?
Public school in East TN, I was born in the deep South and had developed a really lazy way of talking and could not pronounce any words that had th, sh, x, z and a lot of other problems. We moved to East Tn when I started 2nd grade and continued to go to therapy through the 6th. In the 2nd grade I was also put in “special” Ed due to not being understood well.
What did you do during speech therapy?
Everything. Drills, making weird faces, learning to control my tongue, reading aloud, listening to myself on tape, being critiqued
Did it help?
I can correctly pronounce any word in the English language and have tremendous confidence in my public speaking.
Did you like going?
Not at first because there was a stigma to going and my classmates made fun of me a lot.
How did you feel about leaving class?
Mixed, but without meaning to I became the only kid in town with no accent of any kind. I actually had waitresses in town ask me where I was from.
Are you glad you did it?
As an adult, yes most definitely.
Do you think your speech would have self-corrected if you had never gone?
No, I am sure it would have gotten worse.
Thanks!
David Sedaris’ essay called “Go Carolina” eerily echoed a lot of my experience. If you haven’t heard/read it, check it out.
Did you go to public (i.e., a speech therapist provided by your school) or private (your parents took you off campus to a private speech therapist)?
Public school with a public ST.
What did you do during speech therapy?
Worked on my Esses and Rs. I sounded like a gay Elmer Fudd. She had charts, books, pictures, and we worked on things like “pretend your tongue is a snake and your teeth are a fence. When you’re making an ess, make sure the snake doesn’t get out of the fence”. She had a shoebox filled with goodies when I did well (pencils, erasers, etc. stuff used to be found in Perkins’ wishing well).
Did it help?
Yeth. I mean, yes.
Did you like going?
Paranoia of social stigma aside, yes.
How did you feel about leaving class?
Fine. Again, the paranoia of social stigma aside, but I eventually came to turns that it was better to have the speech fixed as that was worse than just going. Are you glad you did it?
Very much so.
Do you think your speech would have self-corrected if you had never gone?
No. I actually went for a while, about 7 years. Although the last two years were more just occasional refreshers. Even now, if I can’t hear myself talk (headphones or after a loud concert), I have a slip with let out a thh sound instead of an ess. I have to definitely concentrate on mouth placement.
*Did you go to public (i.e., a speech therapist provided by your school) or private (your parents took you off campus to a private speech therapist)?
*
I went to public schools and had speech therapy there for a couple years - I want to say 2nd to 4th grade. I think we met once or twice a week. I shared my sessions with a boy named Adam who had similar, although more severe, speech problems. I had a lisp (s as th) and trouble pronouncing nasal tones (m’s, n’s, and ng’s).
What did you do during speech therapy?
I started out having to learn the correct tongue position for making my problem sounds. I remember I had trouble getting the back of my tongue to move to the roof of my mouth to make the “ng” sound, so my therapist told me to tip my head back as I did it so gravity would help pull my tongue into the correct position. As others have mentioned, there was a lot of talking. What did we do this weekend, read a story aloud, etc. The therapist would correct us when we pronounced something incorrectly. One of the last things I did was write a short story and read it out loud.
Did it help?
Yes! It eliminated all my speech problems. Occasionally, people ask me if I’m from another country because my pronunciation is so precise that it can sound like a slight foreign accent. (I’ve been asked if I’m British, German, and Scandanavian. More commonly, I’m asked if I’m Canadian, but that’s due to my slight Wisconsin accent.)
Did you like going?
Sure, it got me out of class!
How did you feel about leaving class?
See above.
Are you glad you did it?
Yes. Speech impairments aren’t as cute once you’re not a little kid.
Do you think your speech would have self-corrected if you had never gone?
Doubtful. My parents did correct me on some other mispronunciations - I used to pronounce “church” as “turch” - but I don’t know if they would’ve been able to teach me sounds that I’d never learned properly. I couldn’t hear the mistakes that I was making, so it seems unlikely that I would’ve been able to entirely self-correct.
I worked with a speech therapist provided by the school, in the school building, during school hours.
Read out loud, cut pictures representing my “problem” sounds out of magazines.
I don’t think so.
No. It struck me as a waste of time, doing silly, pointless activities to address something that wasn’t actually a problem.
Embarrassed. I was yanked out of class to address something that was “wrong” with me.
Heck, no.
In a sense, no - despite therapy, I still swallow my “L” sounds and lisp a bit when I’m very tired. On the other hand, I don’t think my “speech impediment” has ever been mentioned by anyone *except *the teacher who sent me to speech therapy in the first place.
It didn’t help that speech therapy class met in the same room as “special ed,” so everyone associated speech therapy and learning/developmental disability.
It was provided by the school’s special ed teacher. I don’t know if that even counts as speech therapy by your standards, but schools with their own nurses, psychologists and speech therapists are kind of a mythical thing to me - we had teachers, administrators, and secretaries, that’s it.
Recited stupid sentences about what kids of soup I liked (I had a lisp) and recited tongue twisters. That’s all I remember.
Not in the short term. It did teach me where my tongue was to go, but it took a few years to be able to do that automatically. I remember people still getting confused about whether I was talking about “mass” or “math” in grade eight, but by that time I knew how to correct myself.
No, I hated it. I was in grade four and it was always during French which was my favourite subject. I felt the teacher was really condescending and I felt incredibly self-conscious.
My parents pulled me out because I felt I was getting behind in French. (A beautiful, beautiful language without any confusing “th” sounds. ;))
I’m glad someone pointed it out to me because I couldn’t figure out why people confused some words that I said. I’m not glad that they made me so self-conscious about my speech, which lasted far longer than the lisp did. (I still refuse to say certain words because I hear a lisp even when people insist they would never have known.)
No idea.
I guess I’ve had the only negative experience. Maybe the lesson is that it’s better to do it when kids are really young?
Did you go to public (i.e., a speech therapist provided by your school) or private (your parents took you off campus to a private speech therapist)? Public
What did you do during speech therapy? Eliminated my lisp early on and mainly worked on my Rs. I’ve worn hearing aids since I was 3-4 and my speech issues stem from that.
Did it help? Yes, absolutely. I am told I speak very well for someone with my degree of hearing loss. Also, no more lisp! I barely remember ever having it.
Did you like going? It was OK. Sometimes frustrating but I knew it was helping me over the long run.
How did you feel about leaving class? All the kids looked at me with envy for getting out of class, haha
Are you glad you did it? Yes
Do you think your speech would have self-corrected if you had never gone? Probably, but not to the extent it did with therapy. I still have trouble with my Rs and doubt I would ever have recognized how badly I say them without the years spent on proper tongue placement.
I didn’t, though I should have. I typically spoke so fast that nobody but family could understand me. It’s still an issue sometimes.
My brother had to go, and had to learn to speak with marbles in his mouth. Literally…marbles. To help him enunciate, I suppose, but I have no idea what the problem itself might have been. It wasn’t a physical issue, that’s all I know.
I have no earthly idea, and I really do have a good memory for these kinds of things. I remember the teacher’s name (Ms. Collendar or something like that). I remember the few other kids in the class. And I remember she would give us these big-ass cookies right before we left her class. We’d return to the normal class and all the other kids would be upset that we had goodies and they had none. I remember one little girl always crying that it wasn’t fair. I bet the other teachers hated Ms. Collendar.
I’m assuming it did since I didn’t have to back the next year? I don’t think my twin sister and I had real speech impairments–we were just so used to speaking “twin” talk that we hadn’t learned to pronounce certain words correctly. Like “sausage”. I remember calling it “saw-sitch”, to the laughter of my siblings.
Like I said, all I remember was the cookies. So yeah, I liked it.
I don’t remember feeling weird about leaving, but I do remember feeling weird when we’d return. Sometimes it would be during nap-time, but because we missed out on whatever activity the other kids had been working on, we’d be pulled into a dimly-lit corner and made to work while the other kids slept. I remember not really understanding the situation. I think I thought we were being given extra work or something. It didn’t bother me, but it did feel weird.
To be honest, I wish I had been in speech class when I had hit my middle school years. Because that’s when I began to develop the same dysfluencies that bother me today. Like slurred speech (which granted me the “retard” label by my classmates) and situational stuttering and cluttering. Right now, if I want to speak intelligently, I have…to…talk…real…slowly. So I guess I’ve coped with it, but maybe some formal instruction would have helped me.
Me: no, I was absurdly articulate as a child. My brother went, but he was 7 years older, so I’m not sure what he did; he used to make fun of the drill sentence “Larry like lollipops,” so I suppose he had “L” troubles.
My son goes to speech therapy, but as a non-custodial not-living-that-close parent, I’m not up on the details. His speech is a little childish-sounding for a 7-year-old, but I’m not certain which sounds are doing it – maybe the r --> w thing, a little.
but like most of the posters here I recall little of the experience. Then, almost 50 yrs later, so goes my son, for the same problem (Rs). I can say that when we sat and talked to his speech therapist I was blown away by the body of knowlege and sophistication she was employing in correcting his speech. I firmly believe it helped, although who knows about self-correction likelihood?
Both were through the school system, BTW.
I went at two times. I went pre-K at Queens College - I have no idea whether it was public or private. I don’t remember anything about it.
I also went one year during Junior High, definitely public. We did sound exercises. The chief benefit is that it got me out of typing class.
I don’t know if it helped or not, but I do lots of speaking at conferences where attendees get to give feedback, and I get very good scores. I think I probably grew out of any problems I had.
Both. I don’t recall how long I was in private speech therapy, but it overlapped at least some. I think I “graduated” in…2nd grade?
I was being treated for rhotacism and generally poor articulation. I don’t remember that much, but pronunciation stuff. Probably later in the course of my treatment there was a lot of reading stuff out loud. I recall getting rewarded with candy for a job well done.
Yes and no. In my mind I still have a noticeable speech impediment; others claim not to notice it.
I didn’t mind seeing the private therapist, but…
Haaaaaated it. I was the nerdy little kid who just wanted to blend in.
Yes. And this is why we don’t let 5 year olds make their own decisions.
Nope. The school started paying for it in kindergarten because, after some amount of time working with a private speech pathologist, my teachers still couldn’t understand me.
Did you go to public (i.e., a speech therapist provided by your school) or private (your parents took you off campus to a private speech therapist)?
The school provided it.
What did you do during speech therapy?
A lot of drilling. Sort of like toungue-twisters.
Did it help?
Not really
Did you like going?
I can honestly say that I didn’t care one way or another.
How did you feel about leaving class?
I did it during homeroom, twice a week, so that wasn’t a big deal.
Are you glad you did it? Do you think your speech would have self-corrected if you had never gone?
My speech never really corrected, although it may have improved somewhat. In the overall scheme of my life, it had no impact.
Public. In 5th or 6th grade ( I forget which, it was the same school ) they had a speech therapist come through and briefly meet with each student and I got flagged for my s/th pronunciation.
This was a long time ago now, but I recall reading sentences/passages from books ( mostly sf novels per my choice ) and working on making mechanical correction of my pronunciation to make them a) consistent and b) unforced and automatic. They were other exercises, but I honestly can’t recall what they consisted of.
I think so. It was a very minor speech impediment which no one had ever remarked on before and I eventually got about, I don’t know, maybe an 80-90% correction. Every once in a very rare while I have to think about what I’m doing with my tongue.
Not particularly. But it wasn’t onerous, the therapist was nice and loaned me many books from her husband’s SF collection and it didn’t last all that long. Also it was after school and I don’t recall any particular social stigma.
Not exactly what you’re looking for, but I can give you info on my daughter’s experience from my point of view.
In the early 80’s she attended a pre-school for severely developmentally disabled kids as one of the non-disabled cohort kids. This was great for us, free pre-school right down the road. The speech therapist for the disabled kids identified our kid as speech disabled as well. A major surprise to us until we realized that her older brother spoke for her all the time. When we actually listened to her we couldn’t understand a word she said. Hearing testing, etc ensued.
So she got tossed from the free pre-school, got enrolled in speech therapy three days a week and we got to pay for a baby-sitter. In the process we had to declare her disabled, which was a whole other can of worms we worried about endlessly at the time. She was subsequently assigned to an all day speech therapy intensive kindergarten with the goal that “no one will ever know she ever had a speech problem.” And so it worked out.
She’s now a Clinical Psychologist. Life is good.
Her kindergarten and the rest of her education up to but not including the collegiate level was in the public school system fwiw.
These are wonderful responses. I enjoyed reading the adult perspective looking back.
In retrospect, I wish I had opened it up to parents whose children currently attend speech therapy because I’d like that perspective, too.
One thing that is interesting to me is that quite often I don’t notice when one of my students has speech issues. I’m just used to the fact that young kids don’t always speak perfectly. If someone points out an issue to me, then I’ll notice it.
I also have many students with severe issues. I have a student now who can’t produce anything close to an r sound. One of my colleagues suggested a referral to our speech pathologist, but the parents said no. And then this year the parents asked me to make the referral. (I need to follow up and see how it’s going.)
In general, I have many, many students with articulation issues more severe than the students who do go to therapy. It’s very difficult to make any type of referral for special education these days because so many parents do not want their child “labeled.” One area in which we’ve made tremendous gains is in reading referrals. Parents don’t want their kids getting extra help in reading because of the “stigma.” Well, we have a new reading specialist who is polite, professional, and blunt. She convinces parents that the stigma of going to reading instruction is nothing compared to the stigma of a child trying to get through life without being able to read. She has improved the reading skills of dozens of kids–to the point where by the time kids get to me, the only students I’m referring for reading help are new students.
I went when I was 4 or 5, mainly to get me started talking, not so much to correct anything.
I remember the waiting room, a really cool balloon another kid had, amd the keyring full of objects to say the names of (one of which was a little plastic hot dog.)
I went in 4th and 5th grades back in the mid-50s. It was my Rs, and I was all “wascaly wabbit.” The teasing was pretty merciless, and the humiliation when the gorgeous 6th grader next door asked me, “why do you talk like a baby?” is something i still remember.
Did you go to public or private?
Public. There was a tiny room in one wing of the school.
What did you do during speech therapy?
I don’t actually remember much all these years later. I believe they had me working on trilling my Rs as an intermediate step. I know they worked on my tongue position.
Did it help?
Not for the longest time, then pow, one day I positioned my tongue properly, heard it come out right, and it was gangbusters after that.
Did you like going?
Nope, but I like being taunted even less.
How did you feel about leaving class?
I didn’t like the sense of being singled out in front of my classmates.
Are you glad you did it?
You betcha.
Do you think your speech would have self-corrected if you had never gone?
Perhaps. One of my nieces had a similar problem, and did not go to therapy, as far as I could tell. It was only as she was leaving high school that she started to pronounce her Rs, if somewhat tentatively. Perhaps I would have self-corrected in a similar fashion, but I doubt the extra seven years of “talking like a baby” would have had a positive effect on my psyche in the meantime.
I went in the fourth grade and some of fifth grade. When I was eight I had broken my front tooth in half and had to keep it that way for about a year until my tooth had grown in enough for a crown. I got used to sticking my tongue past my teeth and so formed a lisp. I stopped going because our school got a new speech therapist and for some reason (I don’t remember now what it was) I didn’t like her. My parents were of the “whatever” variety, so when I said I didn’t want to go anymore, they didn’t much care and let me quit.
Did you go to public or private?
Public. The school speech therapist heard me playing on the playground and flagged me.
What did you do during speech therapy?
Played games and used flashcards. That kind of stuff.
Did it help?
Yes. I now know how to fix my lisp. It still comes out every once in awhile if I am not thinking about it, and I hate saying the ess sound because of it.
Did you like going?
Yes, I loved it until the new therapist showed up.
How did you feel about leaving class?
That was the best part.
Are you glad you did it?
Absolutely. The only regret I have was that I didn’t continue going until my lisp was completely gone.
Do you think your speech would have self-corrected if you had never gone?
I really don’t think so considering it still pops up occasionally.
