montessori not good for speech delay child?

[elaineandmichaelsmommy]

Ds speech therapist was over the other day and we talked briefly about preschool. I was telling her about how mont. is child directed and tends to be rather a quiet environment and focusing on your work is a good thing..etc,etc. And that this is why all our toys are out on display and not in toy boxes or put away.

She said she thought that if mont. was that child directed and quiet that it might not be the best place for him. That he would need a school that was more verbal and where the teachers would encourage him to talk. I'll admit that they don't sing a lot of songs at dd/ds's school. And that circle time is a story time but it's always a factual nature story. Never a fantasy story. And I suppose that I could understand that for a child like ds who is happy to focus on his toy and could easily be quiet for several hours without talking, perhaps an environment where that is acceptable isn't the best for a speech delay child.

I'd like to have a meeting with myself, the speech therapist and the headmistress of the school so that we can address the concerns and make sure that mikes needs are going to be met.

Does that idea seem over the top? Has anyone else put a speech delayed child in montessori (ami) and had a good experience?

He's doing well by the way. We're up to 3 word sentances!!!

[maestramommy]

Hmmm, that's interesting. There was a classic montessori school near us and I did check it out because Dh and I liked the idea of structure and focused activities. We thought it would fit nicely with Dora's personality. But I did read on this forum once that if a child is speech delayed (Dora is) it might be better to have a preschool situation that would get them to talk more. We have decided not to pursue montessori for now, as we've just moved to a new state, and would like to give the preschool in our district a try. It has an equal mix of regular kids and kids with some kind of developmental disability or delay. Dora's speech therapist thought this kind of situation would be perfect for her because she could continue to get some speech support. I read about this kind of school on the this board and thought it sounded very interesting. It's also very inexpensive, whereas montessori tends to be very expensive.

[JBaxter]

I put Nathan into Montessori at 2yrs 10months with at 30% speech delay It was the best thing I could have done for him. His speech did progress but he did not get frustrated but did use his words with the other children and teachers. Montessori is not just quitely working on your own but ours the children work with each other and there is circle time and interactions. The teachers introduce new materials, show and tell, birthday walks and other interactive activities. For us it was a very good choice. Nathan will be staring his 3rd yr of preschool in August and is very much looking forward to it.

I didnt want to put him into a high stress learning center where no one understood him and he became discouraged. He did it on his own and excelled.

[icunurse]

I briefly looked into the local Montessori and spoke with a few people who have/do teach at Montessori schools. The Montessori by us is Spanish-immersion, which we ruled out as probably not a good choice for a child with a speech delay. The others that we spoke with basically said that Montessori is very independent and child-directed. While we knew DS is very independent and can play well by himself, we also needed someplace where he was not only going to have to speak, but where he was going to have a teacher with the time and patience to really listen and understand him. So, we basically chose the school with the lowest student-to-teacher ratio. It has very little structure in the preschool year, but it encourages the children to try new things and interact. It has turned out to be a great fit for him.

When DS aged out of Early Education services, I was surprised at how the school districts do their therapy (and I didn't/don't think it is doing much, honestly). But DS's speech has become so good with his school! I'm sure some is just natural progression, some is because we work with him, but I give a lot of credit to the time from his teachers, who went out of their way to try and encourage DS to talk instead of just being quiet and letting the day go by. Plus it seems like his class had a bunch of chatterboxes, so I'm sure that helped, too :)

[1964pandora]

We were advised not to put our speech delayed son in Montessori. I love how the Montessori classrooms I visited were very, very quiet, but that wouldn't have been good for my speech delayed son who needs practice, practice, practice making sounds.

For more professional info. about this topic, you might want to check out Dr. James MacDonald's work. He has about 30 years of experience working with late talking children. He has a website and a Yahoo group called, "Communicating Partners." I got the same advice from Dr. MacDonald. A very quiet environment where children work mostly on their own is not what you want for a speech delayed child unless you can make up for that during another part of the day. If you can keep your child home with you for one-on-one verbal interaction, that would be the very best of all.

Susan

[M&Mmom]

I would think that it depends a lot on the school, the teacher, the child and the parents. I am a physical therapist and I go to a mont school to see one of my patients. She has speech delay as well as feeding, play, and physical issues. The first teacher she had was terrible - none of the kids fed themselves (age 18months to 2 1/2 yrs), they didn't do any educational activities, they all thought the little girl was brilliant because she can follow the routine, etc. It was a really bad situation for her. The teacher left and a new one came in who totally changed the entire classroom. They now do educational activities, story time, circle time, art, outdoor play. The kids feed themselves and all drink out of open cups. This is now a great situation for her (and all the kids imo) and she is really thriving.

So my suggestion is to have that meeting with the SLP, school director and the teacher that DS will have and see where everyone stands. It may not be the best environment for him, but it might be. I would really look into it and decide based on how you feel after talking to everyone involved.