What do they do in speech therapy?

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therapy should be an enjoyable, motivating time for each individual. your speech therapist should want to work with you learning what motivates your child so those things can be incorporated into therapy sessions to experience early success. the earlier a child experiences success, even in the slightest way, the more motivated they should be to work on other goals. if you do not agree with what the therapist is doing talk to them, and if they are not willing to change their sessions talk to someone higher up, each child deserves the most genuine effort and success in communication. if your child is not speaking yet but using gestures, when you say a word that he gestures, you should gesture the word as well, starting to show the vocalizations and gestures can be used in unison, eventually weaning away from the use of gestures primarily.

The problem is that communication skills are so important that they skew all other measurements. Many kids who are very intelligent but can't communicate in some way are frequently stuck with the expectations of a child with low cognition (nothing wrong with having low cognition, it's just that the approach for that is different.)

That being said, I'd agree that the speech therapist should be working with you and you should be aware of what they are doing. The place where we got therapy did have two-way mirrors, and I learned volumes about my son from that.

It is very difficult to figure out the times to push your child when they are frustrated and the times you should leave them alone - I feel for you. I don't think anybody knows the answer to this but you.

Here are some Youtube videos of autistic kids in speech therapy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIzpaMRQW4w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ7wvowhgXM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4GAX-IXE_k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbRDKlLoZCI

A speech therapist works on every aspect of communication. Some will develop plans about how to communicate when your child won't speak. I found that a good speech therapist "got" my son better than any of the team assigned to him.

Just talk with the therapist and be sure you have the same goals, and you agree with what and how they want to work with your child.

I for one, only want to particiapte in rewarding behavior that is within my childs control and that will lead them to their goals. SO - if my child can't speak when stressed, then I would get behind rewarding practicing stress reduction techniques rather than rewarding speaking when stressed.

I am fairly certain that kids are not tortured in speech therapy sessions.

Usually not, but getting a bad one can be counterproductive. We have had speech therapists of varying quality, through the schools. This last one refused to adjust what she did to avoid meltdown triggers.

I wouldn't call it literal torture, it has been a big problem for us. I don't know if it is because she is not very experienced (The one before this one was GREAT) This most recent one is rigid and shoots for the low hanging fruit goals, that she added for things that are really not that big deal. I think she did it so she can look like she is knocking out goals. She has not improved anything else, unlike all the other speech therapists before her.

(He has a very minor articulation issue for "th." I would not have even let her add that as a goal, if I had known that was the main thing she planned on working on him with.

Believe me, he has much bigger (pragmatic/social) issues.

Just want to mention this thread is from 2007 in case no one else noticed.