DJ Rambo, 5, laughs with his mother Diane Rambo as he attends his online kindergarten class, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020.
Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020 | 2 a.m.
DJ Rambo was so frustrated when he couldn’t express himself in preschool that he had to be restrained from repeatedly hitting himself in the head.
“They categorized it as a behavioral problem, but it was deeper than that,” said Diane Rambo, DJ’s mother.
While most children typically start putting sentences together at 18 months, Rambo was delayed until age 3.
He was eventually diagnosed with autism, a developmental disability that interferes with an individual’s ability to communicate.
But when he entered kindergarten this fall at Rex Bell Elementary School and was paired with a Clark County School District speech therapist, DJ’s communication skills were almost immediately enhanced, his mother said.
Most important, the behavioral issues vanished.
“I saw a change in his behavior after he started therapy,” Rambo said. “Now he was able to actually communicate so he would be less frustrated. Instead of showing, he was saying what he wanted.”
There are 16,200 students receiving speech therapy throughout the school district, with at least one speech therapist assigned to every school. Also known as speech-language pathologists, they help children develop sentence structure, pronounce words and articulate sounds. They can also treat and diagnose speech disorders.
Eligible students receive speech therapy at no cost, as mandated by the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Circumstances that make a child eligible for speech therapy and other services under IDEA include learning disabilities, developmental delays, hearing impairment and emotional challenges. Students who receive speech therapy are usually referred by a parent or teacher.
Like all aspects of public education during the pandemic, speech therapy sessions are being conducted remotely.
Sarah Anzalone, DJ’s speech therapist, said there have been some challenges in assessing and assisting students online. Social communication, nonverbal expression, body language, hand gestures and use of space are major components of speech therapy, she said.
Teaching a child how close to stand next to a person can be difficult through a computer screen.
“Any social communication stuff, like proximity, body posture, even eye contact is super tough to address right now,” she said.
She also said it’s difficult to determine whether a child is making sounds correctly if the audio quality is poor on their computer, and if the internet connection times out, she might mistakenly believe the child was slow to respond to a question.
“There have been a couple of occasions where you can’t tell if the kid is processing, is thinking of a response, or they’re having a delay receiving the message,” Anzalone said. “You see them getting frustrated, and that’s a little heartbreaking.”
Many of the children Anzalone works with have sensory issues, which means physical sensations can distract them or cause negative reactions. Addressing sensory issues involves manipulating the child’s environment in person.
“It’s about providing a less stimulating environment and hopefully eventually teaching students how to manage their sensitivity to different things and how to increase tolerance or find ways to accommodate them,” she said.
For many families, the sessions — remote or in person — are life-changing. Rambo has been out of work since the spring because of the pandemic and recently turned down a job offer so DJ’s therapy appointments wouldn’t be interrupted.
“I have to help him focus because he’s like, ‘This is just a tablet.’ I’m like, ‘No, it’s class,” she said.
