Speech therapist with heavy foreign accent, do I request a change?

Question

Hello all, I was hoping you could weigh in on this and help me figure out what to do. My son is 2 years and 8 months old and he was referred to EI by his pediatrician, he has been evaluated and it was decided he does need speech therapy 3 times a week for 30 minutes. With Covid and everything going on ,understandably, the whole process has been delayed and just downright frustrating. He was evaluated months ago and I believe he has improved much since, he is now finally getting set up with a speech therapist who was hoping to start working with him in September which means given he is almost 3 he would age out of it rather quickly. Let me just say he is very good at getting his point across and letting me know what he wants. He does babble more than using actual words but he knows enough to be understood not just by me but others as well. Now to get to my point,  I finally get a call from the speech therapist who will be working with him and she has a very heavy foreign accent. Am I wrong to think that will only delay him further? I don't want to sound mean or discriminatory in any way because I have no issues with her personally but I have genuine concerns about this given he already struggles with words. If any of you have had this experience please let me know how that was for you. Thank you in advance

Answer

I don’t see it as problematic if she’s licensed. She’s educated and licensed by a board that says she’s qualified to do the work, I don’t know that an accent would hurt it. In fact, in my mind, it might actually help by exposing to different inflections and intonations of words.

Answer

I'm torn. I'd say just give it a try and see. She may be more understanding about learning a language because she may have had to learn a language that wasn't her first. I mean, she's a speech therapist for a reason, she must be helping someone. 
But if your son isn't taking to it, I'd request someone different.

Answer

If I understand this correctly you spoke on the phone with the speech&language therapist but did not attend a session yet…?!
I’d say go for a session: u’ll be present.
Just because he/she has an accent doesn’t mean they can’t pronounce the words correctly in English.
We live in UK but English is my 4th language- I speak it correctly but with an accent.
My son is 4 and we recently started SALT with a lovely scottish lady. However when she speaks to him she speaks in a clean plain british english.
We have homework to do and I did explain my concern regarding my own accent but she said it doesn’t matter peovided the words are pronounced correctly.

Answer

I say go in for the meeting and see how it goes. Request a transfer if it becomes a problem. I was a speech kid. That would have thrown me off. But I had some serious issues to work through. My husband also did speech and he did just fine with a heavy accented speech therapist. Every child is different.

Answer

Screw EI! What a nightmare I had with them in regards to my son. Who had a significant speech delay. We just got him a private speech & language pathologist. Went two times per week all thru the pandemic. It made an enormous difference in my sons language skills. He’s now 3.5 and can speak so well! It’s amazing how far he’s come. But EI was a total joke tbh. Not helpful at all!

Answer

Personally yes I think it could make things more difficult. There are some lines of work where it is really necessary to pronounce things clearly in the language that you are speaking/teaching and I think that this is one of them.

Answer

So you're sure the therapost called you and not maybe their secretary or something?

Answer

I don't see how that would have any effect

Speech therapist with heavy foreign accent, do I request a change?

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