What Happened Next

This post has become so backdated that I’m not sure if I should still write about it. Anyway, since I’ve started it, and I don’t like to leave things unfinished, I’d better go on with it before I abandon the idea altogether. But I’ll be as brief as could be, so if you need more details, feel free to ask me. The last post has generated many offline queries, and I’m glad that I decided to share that with the parents out there.

Ok, so we went to see the Speech Therapist (ST) in Island Hospital. We went thru the usual Q&A session and some historical background checks. I was a bit surprised that I could so easily forget some important milestones of my kid, but luckily I managed to trace back from my kids’ blog. Yeah, I guess age is catching up. When the ST has finished questioning us, she went on to assess our kid. I could see how SY warmed up to her instantly, doing as instructed and answering her questions very well. Then there’s the reading game, with stickers as rewards. At times, she got a bit out of control, but the ST gently steered her back to adhere to instructions either with more fun activitiy games or stern disapproval.

After close to ~2 hours, she concluded that it’s mostly related to phonological development. SY seemed to have problem with the “backsound”, such as words starting with ‘g’ or ‘k’. For instance, she pronounced ‘gate’ as ‘date’, or “cart” as “tart”. I found a more comprehensive list here (where SY's case was categorised as velar fronting). So she passed us some exercises that we need to do with SY everyday, mostly on practicing the correct pronunciation. I asked her if she also thought that my child has ADD symptom, but she brushed that aside and said that SY is just a bubbly and cheeky girl. That’s because ADD child would not progress much in learning due to the lack of attention, but since SY is picking things quite fast, so there’s really nothing to worry. Dyslexia is certainly out of the picture by now, as it’s still too early to judge.

Oh yes, this was later seconded by SY’s school principal. Right after we’ve met up with the psychologist, the principal called to inform that she’d talked to some experts while she was having conference outstation and they told her that it’s perfectly normal for a kid less than 5 year old to see things in mirror images. When I told her that the psychologist suspected that SY might have ADD instead, the principal voiced her disagreement right away, she really didn’t think so since SY was rather quiet in school, nothing like an ADD child.

Back to the speech therapies, we’re advised to come back for more sessions, but since her schedule was full till the end of year (yes, this happened last year, so you could imagine how outdated this post is), she recommended us to see her colleague instead. It was better too because we requested for weekends, while she didn’t work on weekends. As of now, we’ve gone thru 4 sessions with her colleague, covering:

i. “k” and “c” sound
ii. “sh” or quiet sound
iii. “s” or snake sound
iv. “ch” – train or ‘sneezy’ sound

So far, SY’s making great progress, and it’s also easier to correct her now. According to the Speech Therapist, it's a good thing to start her early, since she might feel embarassed to be corrrected when she grow older. I sure hope things would be better soon!