Informal Screening of Young Child with Motor Speech Disorder

I wanted to share my thought process for assessing this adorable new client, let’s call her “Lily”, who I  started seeing beginning of January 2024. Lily is seen 3 sessions a week for a half hour each session. Lily exhibits a severe motor sequencing disorder. She has received 10 speech sessions so far. Informal assessment was conducted in the beginning of the first 5 sessions and is ongoing.  I learn something new about her in each session.  It’s like putting this huge puzzle together.  Here is a description of Lily:

   1.        First 2 sessions - play sessions to establish rapport –  visual touch animals Ipad

           app with animal sounds paired with toy animals, tic tac tony game, baby doll set

•    Sound repertoire – PROMPT support - imitated ah for eye, nuh for want, uh for ay,

          see, suh for bye, nuhnuh for  moo, uh oh, ooh, eeh, dee, nee for me, dada

•    No lip sounds – p, b, m, w

•    Excellent attention span

•    Follows directions

•    Good receptive vocabulary

•    Speech is considered to be 5% intelligible in context

•    Upper teeth and incisors rotten (8 are black) – surgery to remove teeth in March

          2024. Oral structure is adequate. 

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I also listened to Lily’s sound repertoire while she played and it consisted of mainly dee dee dee , nuh nuh and suh suh.  She pointed to items, smiled/laughed when she liked the activity, whined when she didn’t. Lily demonstrated eye contact.  I asked her if I could touch her face. She leaned forward and smiled.  She let me provide PROMPT support!