epilepsy and speech - what do you do for school??

My daughters speech wasn't affected when she first started school but about two and a half years ago deteriorated dramatically. She'll be 8 in January but now achieves communication at the level of a 2 year old. Her speech and language therapist said that she had single channel thought process, where she could only think about one thing at a time, and word finding difficulties. Using prompts such as pictures or saying the beginning sound of a word for her often helped. She has recently moved to a special school as she has deteriorated so much, but there they use methods to help constantly as they specialize in problems like hers and she has come on incredibly since starting there. One of the biggest problems we faced with the mainstream school was they didn't know how to deal with her and she was often frustrated and would lash out, which resulted in these incompetent teachers getting her comfy and letting her sleep all day, which in turn caused the knock on effect of her never sleeping well at night, making her tired during daytime, making everything worse. A vicious cycle caused, in my opinion, by the schools lack of care and understanding of her condition. Things can improve with the right help. I was also told by the speech therapist that by answering questions for her, instead of trying to prompt her, I wasn't helping. Oops! It took quite a while to get out of that habit but we live and learn.

It is excellent that you are willing to use sign language to help your daughter communicate.  My son also had problems with communication and I happen to be a speech-lang. pathologist...I guess God was preparing me for my future, smile.  By allowing her to develop language/communication it has been often shown that the frustration factor is reduced and working on speech for communication can be more effective.  Some kids do better with picture forms of communication, especially if there are motor issues.   The training and certification for speech/lang therapists is the same whether they work in a medical setting or educational setting...though in some states the therapist must also have a teaching license to work in the schools, so has done some additional course work for that.   There are limitations to both settings...insurance can dictate what a medical provider can do and state criteria dictates who can be served in the schools.  Your child sounds like she could qualify for both settings which is what I chose to do with my son.   They do need to communicate but not necessarily to work on the exact same goals (for example...one may take speech articulation, one may work on building language, it is all up to you and your team what is best for your individual child).  Just make sure they are not working at odds with eachother (one using sign language, one saying not to use gestures or signs).  Even though I work in the schools and my son is in an excellent school system for kids with special needs, advocating for him never ends.  We are the experts on our kids and unfortunately, even if  you have worked to educate everyone one  year...it is likely you will have to do the same every year.   They have lots of kids and I always want to make sure my son's journey is not harder than it has to be so I keep a file of handouts and include all of the general education teachers, special education teachers, administrative people and nurses in the loop.   These kinds of neurological issues can seem to some people as not as relevant to the educational issues as they are.  That is because the kids are better on some days and have trickier times on others.  They assume this means they are in more control than they are ("He did it the other day so I know he can").   I have to educate them every  year that throughout the day things change due to the seizures and other physical issues.  No one doubts this with a child who only has motor issues and is a little stronger one day than another...but it is often in question with academics and behavior.  A wonderful site for what you can expect from the school system is PACER  a parent advocacy organization that works all over the USA.

I had a meeting at my daughters school a couple of days ago and the speech and language therapist has now decided that we should start using basic sign language as a visual aid to help with her communication. So I think you are giving your daughter a brilliant head start by starting using sign language from an early age. They said that when my daughter is very anxious she can have great difficulty processing what she's hearing and having the signing to focus on aswell makes it easier to understand. Good luck, Jen