Cole's Speech

You may remember, a while back I talked about being concerned about Cole's speech. I filled out a form, and got him on a waiting list for an evaluation. On Tuesday, Cole finally had his speech evaluation.

I dropped Kadance and Hayden off at my cousins house, since we weren't supposed to bring any siblings. Obviously Sage had to come with me, but she just slept and ate. lol! It was quite a long appointment, about 1 1/2 hours. That is LONG time for a 2-year-old to concentrate, and do what is asked of him!

She started out with comprehension, which I was quite sure he didn't have a problem with. I was right. She had a bunch of pages of pictures, and she would ask him to point at certain objects (apple, shoe, etc.), and situations (raining, eating, etc.). She said she would go through them until he got 5 wrong, and then that would be the level that he is at. She got up to the 4-year-old level, and decided to stop, since he still hadn't gotten 5 wrong! Definitely NOTHING wrong with his comprehension!!

Then she moved on to the Language test. He did okay on the language part, but she said at his age it is hard to tell, because if he has speech problems, it can be hard to know where he actually is language wise. Does that make sense? For example, she she pointed to a picture of 2 babies, and asked him "what are those?" Cole said "Baby". So does he understand that there are 2 babies, and just can't say the "s"? Or does he not understand the concept of plurals?`

When she got to the speech part, that is where we really saw his problems. She had a bunch of objects and flashcards, and would ask him to say the name of the object/picture (for example: A picture of a flower "can you say flower?", and Cole would try to say "flower") He replaces a lot of sounds with other sounds, and omits a lot of sounds. She didn't score that test while we were there, because it would have taken too long, but the official results will be in the report they send us. She said that he is moderately delayed in speech.

So Gairod and I have to go to two parent classes, to learn some things to work on at home. Then after 5 weeks of working at home, I have to call her and go back in. Then we will see if there is improvement, and if we need to do speech therapy.

I am kind of frustrated/disappointed. We had to wait a few months to get him evaluated, we finally find out that he IS delayed, and now we have to wait even longer to actually get him some help!! They only have these classes a few times a month, and Gairod is working long hours right now, so we won't even be able to go until the end of the month. Then we have to wait 5 weeks AFTER that to go back in!

So I guess we just wait, and hope he doesn't get even MORE delayed in the meantime!