Table 7.
Theme 3 with subthemes and illustrative quotes.
| Themes | Subthemes | Illustrative quotes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3. Mothers did not always trust or understand their children's SLP. | 3.1. Mothers expressed uncertainty over the diagnosis. | Mother 112: I have to ask myself, you know, is what they're telling me, is this true, you know my kid's at late development, I don't know. Late developer whatever you want to call it so with that diagnosis I was kinda like, I'm not too sure about that. Is it my kids are the late developing or, I don't know. So I guess that diagnosis was kinda hard for me to take, because I'm not so sure if they're telling me the truth or not. |
Mother 108: And so oddly enough I kept in touch with my child's first SLP from when he was enrolled in an Early Intervention Program. And she said “I think you need to take her to a neural psychologist.” So I took my child to a neural psychologist in first grade and he freaked me out…(name redacted). And he said {um} I need to call and IEP meeting. We need to have the school principal there. All of her teachers need to be there because kids like yours fall through the cracks and {um} research shows that when they grow up that (you know) they struggle in life. They don't have a good job. They (you know)> Just kind of a snowball effect for the rest of their life. So I thought “oh gosh. What do I do?” (So) so I called the IEP meeting (and) and (they kind of) they kind of blew it off. They didn't think it was as serious as what the doctor had explained it to me. |
| 3.2. Mothers did not understand the information provided about their child. | Mother 104: She didn't ever really explain anything other than the test results. I remember her going over the test results and I didn't understand the bell curve and index scores and so I wasn't quite sure what she was saying and so I know that I had to take the information that she gave me home and kind of process it. Because I felt like I just didn't have a good grasp on that. It wasn't explained to me that she has a language-learning disability. It was just, “These are her scores. She struggles with expressive language and comprehension.” It wasn't very detailed. |
Mother 109: Well you get like three or four papers, it almost looks like newspapers. And they want you to read them, but it's all the jargon, you know what I mean? My husband has a master degree and I have college and I mean, I never graduated but neither of us are stupid. That sounds rude, but like it's just a bunch of stuff that like, do you know what I mean? Like, it doesn't matter to me. Like I wanna to give it to x (unintelligible utterance) simple and I want you to explain it to me and then we'll work through whatever we have to do. And even then they just give you information that like really means nothing to you. |
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| 3.3. Mothers saw disconnects between their views/values and the SLP's views/values. | Mother 109: They don't listen to you. That drives me up the wall. Because like I'm the one that spend times with my kids. I know what he struggles with. And he said, the speech person there, said well we think he's doing great, dah dah dah dah. He doesn't have these problems anymore. And I was like, hey wait, let's back up here a little, because yeah he is doing lots better, but he can't say this and he can't say this and he can't say this. And like we did this capital state test form and he couldn't pronounce any of this stuff. And I'm like well maybe it's just because he doesn't have to pronounce them all the time. And I was like well maybe a lot of people don't have to pronounce them all the time and obviously he can't. And so obviously there's still problems and they kinda just shrugged it off. So, that right there to me is an issue because I'm not making this, do you know what I mean. Like he can't pronounce it, he just can't and so yeah…. And then the other ones that would always be like hey you know, let's (let's) um, either send him into a specialist or let's have his hearing checked, that was always been their like, I don't know, main thing. They're always like it might be his hearing, and we're like it's been checked a hundred times…. They're figure well if he would learn to read or if we could help him learn to read or learn to help with this and this and this, then the language thing would probably go away to a point. Which so, it wasn't seems like it was ever that huge to anyone else but us. So, but then they never saw the emotional problems either, the frustration out of him…. And then I just they're just so I don't know they're sometimes their expectations are like way, way high. Like I know what my son is capable of and I know and I always want him to be more. Like x him to reach for his goals. But come on, there's some things that they want that is just not, it's not gonna happen. |
Mother 106: We saw the progress. We kind of felt like she needed to go a little bit longer but they said she passed everything and was doing well and just to work on the worksheets at home but it's not the same…. She doesn't go to speech anymore. They stopped in the fall, which I think she needs to continue. “Cause people still say ‘What did you say?’” (106) |
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Note. SLP = speech-language pathologist; IEP = Individualized Education Program.