D1 was a life guard and taught swim lessons for years. When she moved in a house with pool when the twins were 10 months, she started water safety training with them immediately. Took formal lessons at Y over the winter. Continued water safety/basic swimming once the pool warm up in the spring, practiced all summer. Put the new baby into the pool when he was just a month old. Twins took swim lesson at Y in January. All the kids got water safety/swimming in the summer. The girls ( at 30 months) could jump into the pool, come up and grab the side of the pool. They could “crab hands” along the entire length of the side until they got to the steps and get out. Twin A could actually pull herself out of the pool in water over her head without using the steps.
The family just moved to a new house on the other side of the country. No pool, but there is a BIG lake just a half mile away with 5 private beaches w/ swim areas and diving platforms in the lake. So the kids will start on a whole new set of water safety/swim lessons once the swimming areas at the lake open on Memorial Day.
D1 is an ER physician and she sees so many toddler and child drownings. She insists that kids learn water safety skills. Not swimming, per se, but what to do if you fall in. And NO RUNNING inside the pool fence.
BTW, D1 says never use arm floaties. They slide down the arms and can actually hold a child underwater. If you can’t have 1- on-1 adult supervision of very young children, put a life vest/jacket on them in the pool. Once they can safely hang on the edge of the pool, then you can have more one child per adult
I sometimes think arm “swimmies” was a think that many of us with kids in the 80’s/90’s bought into. My kids actually hated the way they felt (so tight!!)
Agree that swimmies as we knew them are not enough.
I sent @snowball a message. If anyone else wants to know about R sounds and 4 1/2 year olds, I would be glad to post here. I can’t diagnose a disability vs a developmental difference without seeing a child…but I will say…the R sound, and especially ones that are volwelized ar, er, air, or, our, ire, etc, are later developing for some kids…and that’s OK.
WRT things sounding different…is there any chance she is now saying more? Sometimes when that happens, there are more opportunities to not do something correctly. Just a thought.
DD1 (mother of 4) - her 4 1/2 YO son and 2 1/2 YO son both have some articulation issues, as she did (DD1 also had speech morphology issues). GS1 did have some speech therapy young (family moved to another state July 2023 and he was done way before then with speech therapy, had limited number of sessions with insurance approval) - he was a reluctant talker, and also helped with some early speech. Reading short word books with lots of pictures of cars/trucks and variety (dump truck, fire truck, police car) - it helps them with articulation as they say the words, I say the words, they work on improving their articulation with looking at my mouth/face. I don’t think they will need more speech therapy as they are improving on articulation and will continue with time. They have their older sister and parents to do the reading ‘exercises’ and also have them repeat words with better articulation. A few times during my visit, I could not understand something GS2 said, and even his older sister could not understand the word/words said.
Everyone…if the parents have a concern about speech sound clarity, really, please have the parents seek out the public school therapist. They will give you the very best suggestions.
Reading and speaking to the little ones is so important. You want it to be a positive experience…not one where they feel their talking needs to be corrected. Read and enjoy.
Your school SLP will be very happy to guide you woth suggestions!
GD started speaking with an accent Sunday while pretending to cook/serve me breakfast. At first I wondered if she was mimicking her other grandparents, but their accent is much different than the one she was using. She sometimes watches Bluey, and I think that was the accent she was aiming for. It made me laugh to think that she’s talking with an intentional accent, when she was barely talking at all last fall!
But the kid either can’t pronounce or doesn’t like to pronounce v’s … it’s banilla & abadacado. I’m sure she’ll figure it out - but if not, her daycare is on top of that stuff.
All of mine had speech therapy in elementary school. My daughter is concerned her almost 17 month old isn’t talking. She is very physical and understands and can follow directions but no words. I suggested she reach out to her pediatrician.
Other grandchild 12 months has hypotonia and gets several different therapies. My DIL would like them to start with a speech therapist but the county hasn’t approved it yet.
When GD started daycare at 21 months, she didn’t speak many words & she didn’t put words together. The daycare staff encouraged D to schedule an appointment with their school district. A speech therapist and a child psychologist came to their house. It was determined that GD was fine - she actually started talking like a small adult not long after the visit - but it was great to know that there was excellent, free support available to them through the school district, if necessary.
As @thumper1 told me in a private message, my D should look into what is available through he public school system. As GD is in a private preschool without services, I wasn’t aware she could still use the public school services. They have already registered for kindergarten, and had a school visit, so maybe D would be willing to check on what might be available.
Rightly or wrongly, because GD was saying these words correctly just a few weeks ago, knowing my daughter, she isn’t going to rush into looking at therapy. This is my prickly child, so anything I say will be taken as criticism, so I will have to tread lightly with any suggestions!
I am still going with Bluey and British grandparents as the cause of the changes!
Elks Club also offers free speech therapy. Our son also benefitted from having free speech therapy at local university from the students. He had speech therapy off and on from preschool through 6th grade. He now speaks perfectly.
Our Dept of Ed provides free speech therapy for toddlers as needed.
We often hear older GD talk like Bluey or Bingo when she’s playing with her Heeler family house and characters, or when she’s acting out a game such as Daddy Robot with H. She asked why Bingo says “laundry basket” differently than she’s accustomed to hearing, so we talked about accents in different places. She likes learning French words from her “Fancy Nancy” books, too. Lately, when she’s said something I didn’t understand she has told me that she was speaking French or Spanish. Okay. She will have Spanish classes in kindergarten, so I told her that I hope she will teach me some new words then.
My GD kept asking for “Tim-men” & she was mad that I didn’t know what she was talking about. Turns out Iraqis call rice temmen. At least that’s the only word her other grandparents use that she uses with me!
Imitating others speech whether it’s someone they know or someone on a screen is an important part of brain development. It’s sort of the same concept of why young kids want you to read the same book over and over and over! Imitation and repetition fires off the neurons in the brain creating stronger brain synapses - the places where neurons connect and communicate with each other! Just like they learn speech as an infant by listening to your voice, watching your mouth/lips move, distinguishing sounds, the action of imitating others is reliving things/people in their day and is good for development - even if they are not saying all the sounds correctly!
You just hope it’s not like George Carlin comedy bits that they are imitating and repeating.
It’s so hard when they’re frustrated with you for not understanding and they keep trying to get across what they want. Our GD would sometimes cry when multiple attempts didn’t work. I’m glad temmen is the only foreign language word that your GD uses with you and you figured it out. I’d be at a loss to Google my guess of what GD was saying to attempt to translate it.
In our area, children through public school program can begin speech as early as age 3, but I found out one can only have one speech session a week; DD1 was in private speech therapy 2X week starting after age 4, and her articulation improved in some months. Then we had her evaluated with public school testing and she qualified for speech due to speech morphology. Later testing showed she also had competing ear auditory processing, but no remediation for that - one learns how to compensate for it.
I recently bought a Bluey book and found out Bluey was a girl. I didn’t know. GKids are allowed to watch Bluey as a special treat. They don’t have a lot of screen time.
A suburb of San Antonio is Helotes, which means Corn in Spanish.
My sister’s husband was so ‘head in the sand’ about either of their sons having any issues. The younger son had such bad speech articulation that I could not understand him saying Lysol Spray - he was saying wysol way, at age 4. Couldn’t tell them anything, and sister has master’s in library science and certified to teach K - 8. School testing for kindergarten, and they had him have speech through about grade 3. He speaks perfectly since then, and I don’t think any of his children inherited the issue. The older brother was ‘so smart’ that they didn’t observe that he never really learned to print all his letters correctly – sister noticed when he had to print stuff with his college applications that this was ‘overlooked’. Both boys were valedictorians in HS, and older boy is high academics (PhD and JD; Rhodes Finalist, etc.)
Brother’s daughter had articulation, and another sister’s daughter had some speech to begin talking. So all four of us that had children had a child that had speech issues.
S1 had a lovely British accent when he was two years old, attributable to the original Thomas the Tank Engine series on PBS and Beatrix Potter videos. It was quite charming! He had six words at 22 months, and hundreds by 25 months. He was the sort who observed and internalized processes before doing them perfectly the first time (walking, talking, toileting, reading, etc.). Is still the same way in his 30s.
S2 was borderline for speech therapy for a long time. Preschool had an SLP via ChildFind come in to evaluate kids every year and finally by 4.5, she said it was time. His issue was dipthongs. He could already read a bit, so the SLP he saw taught him phonics (and used the visuals to connect it to reading). Fixed the speech and gave him the tools to read what interested him, all in three months. The SLP said he accomplished a year’s worth of work that summer. He was motivated because he was getting frustrated with not being understood, and he “wanted to read fourth grade science books.” It worked!
My S got to be added to the Elk’s club speech therapist at his preschool. It was twice a week, I believe. She came to help another student at the preschool so we were happy we could be added on.
