Hello. I’m a graduate student studying speech-language pathology, and one of my new clients at our university clinic is diagnosed with DWS. Before reading her file, I had never heard of this, so I’m trying to do my research. I haven’t found any literature that explains the effects of DW on speech. Does anyone have any good resources or personal experiences about how speech is effected? I understand that this syndrome has a wide spectrum, affecting everyone in a different way, and I know I’ll understand more when I meet her for the first time next week, but I was looking for some help to know how to plan my therapy. She’s almost 3 1/2 years old. I’d appreciate your input. Thanks.
My granddaughter has DWV and although she isn’t old enough to talk yet, she does have sensory issues in the left side of her mouth. She actually prefers her right side over her left in most things she does, its almost like her left side is delayed and it takes awhile for it to catch up with things she can do on her right. Anyway, back to her ST issues, she was choking quite a bit but never when she was feeding, only when she was doing other things that didn’t involve sucking. After weeks of trying to figure out what caused it we saw a ST who confirmed that she doesn’t know what to do with things in the left side of her mouth, so if saliva would happen to collect she wasn’t getting the trigger to swallow. She actually gets very aggrivated if you stick anything in the left side of her mouth…to the right, no problem. Were not sure yet how or if it will affect her speech but I can see where it might when she goes to try and form different sounds with her
tongue. She is 8 months old and babbles quite a bit but doesn’t do any of the repetitive constinants yet…bababab…mamama ect. Anyway just our experince, good luck with your new client 
----- Original Message ----
From: kla323 dws-cpt7477@lists.careplace.com
To: missy23397@yahoo.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 2:36:12 PM
Subject: [dws] DW effects on speech