Speech eval tomorrow. What should I expect? Ask?
Karma1969
member
My son is almost 2 and says 7 words...bye, Cakooo (for Calliou) Ba Do (bad dog) Bar (Barry is my DH's name, he doesn't say mama or dada or anthing close), No, and mine.
I took him for an eval when he was 14 months old but kept being told he was fine and to wait (I should have trusted my instincts). I had Early On coming out to work with him but realized that the worker talked to me more about my job (I'm a LMSW) than she did working with Jacob and that was only offered to me 1x per month.
So, what should I expect, ask, insist on, etc.? Luckily, he is on track with everything else. He just got tubes in his ears and his tongue clipped last month. Hearing has been checked 4 times and is ok.
We are paying OOP because my insurance will only allow us a certain amount of appointments through a hospital and I wanted something more than what they could offer. I'm not sure if this makes a difference in your responses or not.
Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you!
Re: Speech eval tomorrow. What should I expect? Ask?
The only thing that I prepared ahead of time was a list of words that DS was currently saying that the therapist could keep. I categorized them by words that he could say well (like, someone outside the family could understand), words that he could say but only partially (like "dark" is "dar") and words that he mostly signs but also attempts to say. The therapist really seemed to appreciate that.
Other than that, a lot of the session was her trying to get a feel for how his receptive language was (like, did he get the ball when she asked for the ball), if he would mimic her and if she could get him to say some words on his own.
My DS was not very cooperative on the expressive language stuff, so she asked me a lot of questions about what he does at home.
He now goes in 1x weekly and it's taken until the 3rd session for him to not cry and say "no" the whole time. We actually had a pretty fun session this week.
GL!
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My son also only had a handful of words at 2. He had been in and out of our states EI speech program but they kept saying he was fine. Although hsi vocab continued to slowly grow, by 2.5 he could not even say 2 word sentences. I too should have trusted my instinct. He now sees a ST 2x/month for 45min, thats all we qualified for. Turns out they say he doesnt have a language delay, more an articulation delay. Even though his vocabulary is still much smaller than his peers. His ST has said he should catch up to his peers by kindergarten. We have seen such a GREAT improvement already, he speaks in 3 word sentences regularly without promts and says new words everyday.
My advice is to write down the words he is saying and write down any specific concerns you may have (like sounds he makes that you understand but others dont) The ST will ask him to identify pictures, and repeat words. They make it fun for him. Be sure to insist on services. We originally did not qualify for services bc my son's speech delay isn't enough of a delay to require services (he tests at 6-12 months behind his peers-which IMO is pretty significant!) but bc I insisted on services, they allowed him to qualify based on an articulation delay. He can't say the endings of words and will also drop the middle syllable of 3 syllable words.
Throughout, remember it is a slow process but he will catch up! Good luck!