So, as you know, Cole has a speech delay and was approved for speech therapy back in January. He ended up with a pretty significant delay: at 19 months old, he had the speech level of a one year old. (Although, in all other tested areas he was above his 19 month mark, so that was a bit reassuring. Plus, hello? my kid knows almost all the letters in the alphabet - he's a genius!). Obviously, Chris and I were really gung-ho to begin his therapy as soon as possible to get him back on track and to learn what we could do to help him along.
Six months into speech therapy, Cole is making huge (and I mean HUGE!) progress. However, I'm pretty sure just about none of it was thanks to the therapy. Here's why:
- I'm not sure if it's just our Early Childhood Intervention program, or our specific speech therapist, or if it's because it's very difficult to work with such young children, but we have been severely UNIMPRESSED with the speech services we have received. The therapist comes for half an hour to forty-five minutes twice a month (except for March, June, July, August, and December - those months are only one visit due to funding cuts). The visits are so few and far between, it seems as though we never have enough consecutive visits to really get things going on the speech front.
- Cole is so extremely shy, it can take him the whole time with both of us working hard to get him to warm up enough to even try to talk. And even though every time I make a suggestion for the therapist to read a story to Cole right off, to help him feel comfortable and open up, she insists that there's not enough time for it. Most of the half hour is spent having her try to draw him out.
-Cole is also a bit of a perfectionist. He is reluctant to try something until he's sure he'll get it right. He would "walk" while holding onto our hands for months before he risked taking a step by himself - I have a feeling he's just not feeling confident enough in his ability to talk "right", so he's not talking much at all.
- Not to sound like I'm bragging or anything, but all the suggestions the speech therapist has given us to improve Cole's speech are things we already do and have done. No TV? yup. Talk to him like a real person, not in third person? Since birth. Force him to make eye contact when you are talking? yup. Give him choices whenever possible? no-brainer. Sign language? of course. There hasn't been a single piece of advice she's given us that we weren't already aware of.
- Lastly, I don't agree with a lot of her viewpoints and opinions with regards to things like praise and directing play. I feel very strongly about too much praise negatively affecting children's self esteem (she wants us to say "Good Job!" when Cole says something correctly; I hate the phrase and prefer instead to say a statement like "You said that correctly!", which is specific and acknowledging without being praise). I also dislike that a lot of her therapy seems to involve telling Cole what to play with and how to play with it - I think speech can be learned without directing a child's play and ruining their imagination and self-reliance.
That being said, Cole's speech has undoubtedly made improvements in the past six months. He's starting to voluntarily speak a lot more often, naming things off that he sees and using words to communicate instead of gestures. He's starting to string together two-word sentences. And while a lot of the words aren't understandable to anyone other than Chris and me, he is saying consistently over a hundred words, which is a huge improvement from his nine words in January. It's been awesome listening to actual words and sounds come out of his mouth - I hadn't realized just how much we had been missing hearing his little voice!
Tell me, have any of you had early intervention services? What was your experience like? I'd love to know!
No comments:
Post a Comment