2 year old speech eval questions

Socialworkgirl

Hi, I post some over on the Stay at home mom board and everyone is always saying that you all are very helpful over here. 

I am looking for some advice related to my daughter who turned 2 in late June and my concerns about her speech. She says about 10 words but only uses about 5 of them frequently without explicit prompting (2 of which are mama and dada). She knows a handful of signs and uses lots of gestures. Also seems to understand us well. (Follows directions without us giving gestures, etc.) 

 We live in Texas and had evaluations done by ECI at 18 months and a week ago. She did not qualify for services either time. Texas uses the Battelle Developmental Inventory. She had a 20% delay in expressive language and needed to be 33% to qualify. 

We are almost positive that our insurance will not cover speech therapy. We have a speech evaluation scheduled for a couple weeks from now (at the Callier Center at UTDallas if anyone is from DFW) and will pay out of pocket for it and we are prepared to pay out of pocket for therapy twice per month. 

Here are my questions:

 - a couple people over on SAHM board suggested I consider appealing the ECI eval. I could not find anything specific online about how to do this. Any suggestions? Or thoughts about whether pursuing an appeal is worth it?

- any suggestions about questions to ask or info to bring up at our evaluation? I plan to bring a list of all her words and signs. 

- any other suggestions that may help in our situation? 

 Thank you in advance!

Socialworkgirl

We did have her hearing checked at 12 months. She did fine on the test where they wanted her to turn toward the sounds. They weren't able to do he one where they put something in her ear because she flipped out. Pediatrician said not to worry about getting another test. I think she can understand me just fine and don't have any reason to think she can't hear, but I am not opposed to another test.

typeset

I loathe the Battelle, but that's another post.

I think I'd go the private route despite the expense and skip butting my head against EI over scores >10 points from the cutoff. You might ask them for suggestions about how to work with her.

Socialworkgirl

Thanks for the insight. I was assuming that we would do homework in between if we did twice monthly sessions. I stay at home so I have the time to work with her pretty extensively but need guidance from someone who knows what they are doing on what I should do. Obviously, what I have been doing to date hasn't helped that much.

There is a resource and referral service at UT Dallas for parents with development concerns.  They may be able to connect me with other services.  I will give them a call.

Thanks!

Hiccup15

I would suggest going through private. I know there are a lot of different arrangements the clinic we go to can do. One would be to start out once a week for a month, then go to every other week. This way the therapist has plenty of time to show you what needs to be done, and of course you are always welcome to call the therapists with any questions or issues that arise. 

Good luck!

tiffanyirene

-auntie- said:

I'd go forward with the private eval. Not sure twice monthly services would bring much to the party depending on why she's delayed. Perhaps the SLP could give you homeowrk to do between.

My DD is speech delayed and will be getting services 2x a week with our school district and 2x a week with private therapy soon. She's got a few more bumps to work through then it sounds like your DD has but what I wanted to expand on was what auntie mentioned about not getting much 2x a month. We had some many insurance issues getting her into private therapy (another story that's too long to go into) and she couldn't get school services until she was 3 so we took her 2x a month and paid out of pocket. While I agree the actually therapy alone didn't do much it was very enlightening to see how the therapist interacted with DD. We took this philosophy home with us and made drastic changes in the we interact and communicate with DD. In January she said maybe 2 words regularly and now I couldn't even tell you how many words she can say. We are working on her seeing words as a communication tool, she does a lot of labeling now and we are also trying to get her to do 2 syllable words. 

Socialworkgirl

Thanks all! It is really helpful to hear from others who have been in this position. We have an evaluation scheduled for 2 weeks from now and will start as soon as possible after that. Thank you again!

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bellapup

Our local University does speech therapy at a greatly reduced cost.  It's very hard to get into though.  My DD's been on the wait list 3 times (it goes by semesters) and hasn't gotten in yet.  It's definitely worth a try though if it's an option for you.