Well, back to the speech. It improved but not to a level I was
comfortable with. So after much debate, we decided to get his speech evaluated.
This was a hard decision for two reasons:
1. Zach is very speech shy around new people. While he will hug them and
play with them, he won't usually verbalize around people he isn't used to.
2. I don't want to be a parent that pushes my child to do things on my
(or a book with a milestone chart) schedule. I want my child to develop at the
pace he is comfortable with (as long as it isn’t so far off that I am being
neglectful by not addressing the lag).
It was very difficult to get a beat on what exactly was really behind
for his age. I couldn’t find anything that even explained a normal speech
development pattern. I wanted to know whether he was following a normal speech
development trajectory or whether he was way off. I couldn’t find it.
I talked to several professionals that weren’t concerned about his
speech for his age. But it just kept nagging. We got a (great!) referral and
went in for the evaluation.
The process lasted approximately 2 hours. The evaluator was very casual
and sweet with Zach. The initial tests had to do with Zach’s understanding of
language. They sat at a children’s table and started with Zach just playing
with a few items: cup, keys, blocks. After Zach explored the items for a bit,
the evaluator started asking him to hand things to her. Over the test, the
evaluator would periodically switch between having Zach work with actual items
(rubber duck, plastic bear, shoe box, etc) and pictures in a book. It started
with simple identification and moved to more complicated things like action
words and descriptor words.
The entire time she was working with him, the evaluator would make
note of words and sounds Zach would say in response to her requests for items.
She would periodically turn to Matt or I and ask if he normally says certain
words that seemed to be escaping him at the time. She was very good about being
able to identify when Zach just didn’t know words vs he was just being a two
year old and not participating at that moment.
After a while, she moved more toward getting Zach to talk to her. She
would ask him to do multistep tasks and use words as he did them. I have to
say, Zach blew Matt and I away. He did and said things that we wouldn’t think
he could have. The evaluator really seemed to know how to pull the words and
actions out of him.
Eventually, of course, he tired of the environment and the tests. That’s
when the evaluator pulled out the bubbles and Zach was back in the game. He was
an amazing boy the entire time. I was so proud of him and hugely impressed with
the evaluator.
At the end of the session, the evaluator asked that we play with Zach
to see if she could hear words she hadn’t heard before. He was really pretty
tired at that point and wasn’t really into it. She then asked him to eat a
cracker and drink some water and watched how he chewed and swallowed and then
asked to look at his tongue.
In the end the results were great and Zach’s speech is right where it
needs to be. As usual, I expected too much. Shocker. At least I identify this
and TRY to combat it. It all comes out of love for my little man.
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