Delayed Speech

My wife just called and it looks like Baby B is done with speech therapy. When Baby B was first tested about 6 months ago, he tested in the 11 month – 15 month range. Now, he is testing at the 27 – 30 month range.

I am beyond excited, relieved, nervous, but most of all, grateful.  I am grateful for the speech therapy program in our county that helps my son. I’m grateful for the therapists that worked with him and got him to where he is today. I’m grateful for all of the guidance and resources that they provided.

Today marks the end of speech therapy, but the beginning of learning even more.

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We finally got the call from the speech pathologist and she confirmed what we suspected, that Baby B, needed speech therapy. Actually, she said that he qualified for expressive and receptive speech therapy.

I am a web developer, I don’t have the first clue what expressive and receptive speech therapy means? I did a lot of Google searches and this site, for me, helped put it more into perspective, click here.  And this summary, basically says it all:

Receptive language disorder means a child has difficulties understanding what is said to them. Other names for receptive language disorder include central auditory processing disorder and comprehension deficit. In most cases the child also has an expressive language disorder, which means they have trouble using spoken language.

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I still don’t know how Baby B scored on his test, not that it really matters. Though, I would like to see where he is on the scale, meaning how severe of a delay is he? But, he is going to start speech therapy soon and that will be the start of getting him back on track. He has already started saying more words, and as we encourage him more to speak, he seems to be saying more words everyday.

Now, we just wait. We ask more questions. We encourage him to speak more. And we the help of speech therapy, Baby B should be going strong and talking in a matter of no time.
Or, that is what I’m telling myself at least.

 

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We take it all for granted, until it hits close to home.  As I have blogged about in the past, Baby B has been slow with his speech development. This past week, a Speech Pathologist did an initial evaluation on him and started working with him to encourage him to talk. But, an amazing thing also happened this week too. He started talking. Not a lot. But, he did say 2 new words, Baby and Blue. Though not huge in anyway, but he has not only said them, but he keeps saying them.  And he says them correctly when referring to either a baby or the color blue.

This past week, work has been crazy. A lot going on. I was beyond stressed off and I was getting close to the end of my patience. And then something happened. I was playing with the boys and I asked Baby B where his hair was? And he touched his hair. Then we proceeded to go through all of the body parts and for the first time, he touched each and every single one of them as I asked.  And as he sat and smiled, holding his toes, he pointed to my shirt and said “Blue”. At the end of a rough week and all that I have been wanting is for my son to say something, anything, he says “Blue”. I could have cried. And then for him to go through all of the body parts was equally as exciting.

Maybe his delayed speech development is attributed to his brother talking for him? Maybe he just did not have anything to say?  Maybe the speech pathologist helped?

Regardless the reason, he did it. He is beginning to talk. Speech is the form of communication that we know, but it was something that Baby B was not ready to do.

So, we encourage him to talk more. We are still separating them on Saturday mornings.  And we continue to ask questions and help him learn new words. We are still waiting on the report from the Speech Pathologist, but this is a good start.

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