He's failing speech class on PURPOSE!

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My guy (9) has an IEP meeting coming up, and he has to fill out a form. It has questions about "I am really good at...," "I need to work on...," "Somethings I think would really help me at school are..." That kind of thing.

We get to the "I need to work on ..." question and he says "my R sounds," it's the last one I need to work on in speech so I've been failing it because I don't want my speech class to end.

AAAARRRRRGGGGGG Now we know

Awwwwwg! Don't spoil it!

Speech class can be benificial even without impediment. Conversational speech can be on the list of needs to improve once the Rs have been conquered.

That is SO cute!

OK, action.

There are many facets to speech beyond how he says certain sounds. Tell him that if he truly enjoys speech and finds it beneficial, that conquering the "r" doesn't guarantee it will end. And even if they do graduate him now, he may requalify in the future, since the guidelines of what a child should be able to do are a moving target based on age. My son "graduated" from speech in 4th grade and requalified in 6th.

Meantime, talk to the speech teacher about the various qualifying factors, and let her know that your son is apprehensive about losing the service (you don't have to tell her he's holding back on his progress as a result). Discuss pragmatic speech criteria, metaphors, and so on. Those are the areas that have qualified my son; he never had trouble with any specific sounds.

That's actually pretty cute. And very smart.

Curious...did you find your child actually received assistance in these areas? My experience was years ago when little was known of Aspergers in the school system and speech therapy was...well, speech therapy. Do you find speech teachers in schools now equipped to offer language therapy?

At 7 James was in 2nd grade last school year. We had the hardest time getting any school work out of him. One day(in the last 2 weeks of school) I get an e-mail from his teacher. James did all his work today! When he got home he showed me his star( a star shaped paper with good job written on it). I said wow James thats great you should do your work all the time. He said no cause if I did it all the time I wouldn't get one of these!

momtojames: That sounds like my guy's reasoning too sometimes. haha

DW_a_mom: First thing I did was write an E-mail to the teacher, so too late for not telling! His teachers are really nice and helpful, so I hope it was for the best.

I'm hoping that his speech teacher will go over other types of speech therepy with him and all that, ease his conscience. He doesn't consider me "an expert" on things speech, so he wouldn't even believe me if I did say anything about it.

I found the pragmatic speech instruction to be really effective. My son has been less than enthusiastic about their attempt to teach him metaphors; he feels he knows already what they are teaching. So, its hard to say on that. The new speech teacher is working mostly on conversation skills and is going to create a lunch bunch; lunch bunches are highly popular.