I’m not an SLP, but I’d really appreciate some professional opinions.
My 2 year old currently receives private speech therapy. He had the same SLP from the time he was 9 months old (starting with feeding therapy and later transitioning to speech therapy) until last month. She left to stay home with her baby. He made steady progress with her, she always gave us activities to work on at home, and she advocated for him every step of the way.
Our new SLP just graduated last month. We’ve seen her four times, and honestly I’m struggling with how things are going. During multiple sessions, she has told me she isn’t sure how to help him because he’s so young and has had to ask her coworkers for guidance. During one session, she even turned on Ms. Rachel on her laptop. Unlike our previous therapist, she hasn’t given us any home strategies or exercises to work on between appointments, and I haven’t noticed any progress so far. She gets out multiple toys when he can really only focus on one at a time.
I also explained to her that private speech therapy is becoming financially difficult for us. We pay about $100 per session, and weekly appointments just aren’t sustainable right now. I told her we were considering enrolling him in our state’s early intervention program and then supplementing that with private speech twice a month. At the following visit, she told me she didn’t think that was a good idea because he’ll only qualify for the state program until he turns 3 and recommended that we continue weekly private sessions, even after I had already explained that we simply can’t afford it more than twice a month, our deductible is so high we will never meet it, and it has left us with paying $100 upfront every session.
One thing that has also been bothering me is how the conversations about cost have gone. When I told her that therapy was becoming too expensive for us, she responded sympathetically, but I wasn’t looking for sympathy, I was trying to explain that we genuinely cannot afford weekly sessions. I was hoping that would lead to a discussion about practical things we could do at home between visits if we had to reduce the frequency of private therapy.
Instead, it seems like a lot of our sessions involve her getting on the laptop and giving us paperwork, such as information about preschool enrollment, even though my son just turned 2. Our previous SLP never focused on those things. She spent our sessions teaching us strategies we could use at home and tailoring everything to his immediate communication needs, which is what I was hoping for with the new one.
At this point, would you recommend asking for a different SLP, having an honest conversation with her first, or maybe speaking with owner of the private practice? I’d really value input from experienced SLPs.