Speech Therapy

Gunner is about 20 months old (or as I like to call it 1 1/2,) He currently doesn’t say words but only sounds which was a little disconcerting because a few months before that he said words like mom, dad, brother, hi, bye and then out of no where he stopped and just did the sounds of the words. Like awm, awae, aber, iiiee, yi.

So at his last doctor appointment a few months back I asked the doctor about it. He didn’t seem to concerned with it and said that if he still wasn’t then we should look into something. He checked his ears and everything looked fine.

I still didn’t feel right about it. I knew that we needed to do something to help so I reached out to Facebook who my friends suggested that I look into the early intervention program which a did a few weeks ago.

When we had his first initial screening he tested high (33 months) on all the social aspects and functional aspects but for his speech he tested at a 9 month level.

They tested his ears and found nothing on the first test but when they saw such a difference from one level to another they question his ears again because they said that normally a jump from 9 months to 33 months would be a child that would be on the spectrum but he as no signs of that at all.

They did another test for his inner ear and saw nothing on his right ear but some abnormals in his left. They said that really that could be anything. Did he have a cold earlier or maybe he had water in his ears. So they didn’t want to rule that out.

They left us with the “we will call you.” and we walked out feeling like we had relief that it wasn’t in our heads that yes there was an issue but that we were still in the not knowing stage.

and mom guilt was in full force.

We had our first home visit with our speech therapist Sue Ellen on Tuesday. She was full of energy and brightness and had such a way to her that in the times I was speaking to her and wanted to cry she would see that and reassure me that  none of this was my fault and that we will have goals and meet those goals and we will get him to where he is suppose to be, whatever that is.

Our goals are:

• Bath time toy time with sign language. So I will have 3 toys, a ball, a car, a duck and line them up and have him ask for them using the sign.
• When he is eating we need him to use the sign for more and what kind of drink he wants: Milk, Juice, Water.
• When he says a sound for a word like awae for daddy we say “yes, that’s daddy he is home/here” and point to dad. So he knows what the correct sound is like.
• Go to group toddler class up to 4 times a week.

So far we have done the more sign when he wants a drink and have he use the correct sign for which drink he wants and man is it crazy how quickly he caught on to that and how wonderful it is to not have a tantrum because we do not know what he was asking for. He also does the sign for his toy cars, so when he is in his car seat he uses the sign to tell us that he wants his toy cars. (that one is still a little tuff.)

It has only been 3 days but I am already exciting at how much we’ve accomplished in that amount of time. We still are concerned with the inner ear and will have it looked at each time they visit just to be sure but so far they don’t believe that could be the case.

Are next visit with the speech therapist will be on the 29th and we will have more intense visit where she will work one on one with him. By the way, I can not believe that all of this is free. Its wonderful.