Why do I have to go to speech?

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DS6 is in kindergarten and is pulled out twice a week for speech and OT. He dislikes it and keeps asking me, "Why do I have to go to speech? Un-sign me up." I'm having a hard time explaining to him why he's in speech. He understands that he is working on "sounds", but speech/OT are going to continue long after "r", "l", and "th" are cleared up. How do I explain pagmatic difficulties and the need for social skills class to a 6 year old?

No good answer for you, but I can commiserate: just spent several hours arguing with DS over why he can't mistreat people who "don't use the exact names for things" and how those people are not stupid, they just talk differently, and different things are important to them. This is the child who will correct you if you call "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" "Smash Brothers," and will resort to screaming if you don't say it "the right way."

He's in 3 different therapies for communication and social skills and doesn't understand why, either.

My daughter also dislikes speech. I tell her they are people who went to school to help people practice communicating effectively. Then, when there are instances of misunderstandings or pragmatic issues I can gently point out: "This is where Miss Megan helps you".

I am not convinced our Speech Therapy helps in real life, although I understand it is a SLOW process. My daughter's scores on the CASL have improved, but as long as she is testing below the impaired cutoff, I will continue to take her to Speech. She is currently testing around 90 (which is much better than where we started), and I believe the cutoff is 125 and lower. I do think she has "learned" the correct answers for the testing even if she doesn't apply that knowledge in everyday life. That is the flaw of Speech Therapy. For articulation issues-she is very behind-testing at age 4 years 9 months when she is 8.5 years old. I was hoping the articulation issues would clear up by now.

We did drop OT this year. However, I do believe OT was a tremendous help for my daughter.

I would first of ask why he dislikes it. Does he dislike the teacher? Are the lessons boring? Is he missing his favorite part of the school day to go to speech? Does he feel embarrassed about leaving the class?

(I kept getting sent to the school counselor when I was in first grade for failing to talk in class--sective mutism, a severe social anxiety disorder where the child can talk but freezes up and becomes mute in school, daycare, etc--and the school counselor didn't know what to do anyway. I felt like the other kids would think that there was something wrong with me if I had to leave the class.)

I always tell my older son that I love him very much and want him to do well at school. I also tell him that sometimes I had challenges and that his daddy sometimes had challenges but that we did okay. I tell him that it is important for a second grader to ________,, so we have to work at it.. I also always tell him how proud that I am of him for trying so hard, that hard work makes me proud, and that trying is the most important thing.

I would agree that if you can find out more specifically why he dislikes it, you made have more success coming up with an arguement or mitigating his concerns. Of course if he doesn't like the teacher, that may be a tough one.

Momsparky! that is my son to the letter! He is like that with everything. He doesn't scream as much as he used to but he HATES when someone calls something "wrong".. btw mine LOVES SSBB and Mario!

It tickled me near to death when the kids (all on the spectrum) in his social skills class were all leaving describing their favorite games, and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM used the ENTIRE proper name, including the numbers and the decimal point.

Truthfully, I find it terribly charming, and would let it go entirely - except that DS is mistreating other kids in school who don't follow his rigid language expectations.

Aww yeah I find most of my sons quirks to be so cute and not really a burden at all. He is just very proper. I don't really know any other children that have AS, my best friend's son has Classic Autism and is mostly non verbal, so he isn't really like my son save for they both flap and jump up and down when excited. I wish I could find my little dude a friend that is like him.. Maybe I will look for a parents group in the area.

So far I can't get any details from DS other than it's "Boring!" He also said he doesn't want to miss anything fun in his gen ed class, so maybe that's the issue for him.

Boring can be a code word for a lot of things. I know my son never wanted to miss the material in general ed, either, but it did make it easier if HE thought the pull out service was accomplishing something for him.

It helps if the child gets a say in the schedule, ie what subject will be missed and how often. One issue with these pull outs can be the lack of control, and how it adds to stress in the classroom (suddenly they are talking about material he missed, and so on).

It may be the teacher, not him. When a teacher is too difficult and makes things so hard, the kid will dislike therapy. I hear that most teachers like OT and speech therapists make their students feel broken because of the way they do it.

Have you asked him why he doesn't like it and if he likes his teacher or not and ask for details like what does the teacher do with him during therapy, what do they do together?


I loved speech as a kid but when I was in 6th grade I hated it because it wasn't the way my old speech therapist did it. My old speech therapists had us play board games and she used fake money she called "speech bucks" and we earn them as we worked on our communication skills or social skills or working on our words and working on our body posture and we were allowed to save the money or use it for prizes she had. But the speech therapist in 6th grade wasn't like that at all and she had no board games to play and everything evolved around the letter R I needed to work on. I had a hard time getting along with her and it seemed like I could never say the right things. It was just stressful and I was glad when mom didn't have me do therapy anymore with her nor OT in my school. I didn't get along with the OT teacher either. But I liked OT with someone else I saw in her home privately. She had puzzles and fun games I played and I was allowed to stop them anytime and not forced to stay with one activity like the other teacher did.


I didn't really understand either as a kid why I was in therapy. Mom did explain to me why and one of them was for my sensory issues I was not aware of and how I processed things in my mind. Speech therapy, mom told me it was for the letter R but before that it was to help me understand turn taking in conversations and staying on topic and pausing between sentences and trying to talk slow. But I was in my teens when she told me why I was in speech therapy before 6th grade and as a small child, it was to help me to talk because I was mute and then when I did start talking, it was to learn to hear the words right so I wouldn't leave the endings off or the beginnings. OT, mom told me it was to help with my dyspraxia.