Q and speech
Quentin had the first half of his Early Intervention assessment yesterday. I had called to get him assessed because we're still slightly concerned about his speech. It's unsurprising, after all his issues with ear infections, even after the tubes went in a year and a half ago, that he might be a bit delayed. His ears have been clear (and infection-free) for over six months now, and he's had a burst of vocabulary, but he's not quite where a 31-month-old should be. And since EI is free in my state (or at least, covered by health insurance) until age 3, it made sense to call them in and see if they can help get him caught up in the next 5 months.
Three ladies came to our house for the assessment-the speech pathologist, and also a new staff member who is unfamiliar with the assessment tool they use, and an intern. (They asked if I minded them doing education and training during his appointment, to which I answered, “Go education!”) The speech pathologist was very patient, as one must be in her line of work, I'd think. Q took a little time to warm up to the idea of interacting with her, but was soon participating in her little “games:” taking puzzle pieces “out” of a puzzle, building a tower, finding a ball under a cup and shuffled around.
I knew that his articulation is fuzzy, and that he doesn't have the verbal skills to keep frustration at bay. What became increasingly clear to me as she tested him, however, is that he's missing syntax. He hears nouns, and most verbs (especially action ones), but word order means nothing to him, and he doesn't get prepositions or pronouns. He gets “in” and “out” better today, after everything she had him do moving things into and out of other things (he demonstrated this later in the day by stepping into and out of the baby pool and announcing “in” and “out,” so he's already learning. :D) She had little plastic manikins and asked him to do things like hand the baby to me (which he did), but when she put a mom figure out and asked him to move the baby “toward” the mommy, he once again picked up the baby and handed it to me. When asked to “touch the block and turn over the cup,” he cocked his head, put the block in the cup, and then turned it on its side.
Paying more attention to our conversations with him with the rest of the day, I started noticing other things she had noted: he needs things demonstrated for him, or he needs gestures to make our directions clearer. Most of his conversing consists of repeating the key words of our own utterances: “Do you want more juice?” “More juice!” While he didn't narrate what he was doing while he did it for her, he does do it for us-but it's usually just nouns and well-known action verbs: “kick soccer ball!” “fall down water!”
This leads me to believe that they'll qualify him for speech. While the stage he's in is perfectly normal, I'm pretty sure it's normal for an earlier developmental stage. He still has to do the cognitive testing-he was getting tired of the assessment and it was way past naptime when they wrapped up-so we won't know until after that how he scores. But I'm hopeful that he's on his way to getting some help.
Also posted at http://kouredios.dreamwidth.org/217618.html ; feel free to comment there if you so choose: add comment/
comments.
Three ladies came to our house for the assessment-the speech pathologist, and also a new staff member who is unfamiliar with the assessment tool they use, and an intern. (They asked if I minded them doing education and training during his appointment, to which I answered, “Go education!”) The speech pathologist was very patient, as one must be in her line of work, I'd think. Q took a little time to warm up to the idea of interacting with her, but was soon participating in her little “games:” taking puzzle pieces “out” of a puzzle, building a tower, finding a ball under a cup and shuffled around.
I knew that his articulation is fuzzy, and that he doesn't have the verbal skills to keep frustration at bay. What became increasingly clear to me as she tested him, however, is that he's missing syntax. He hears nouns, and most verbs (especially action ones), but word order means nothing to him, and he doesn't get prepositions or pronouns. He gets “in” and “out” better today, after everything she had him do moving things into and out of other things (he demonstrated this later in the day by stepping into and out of the baby pool and announcing “in” and “out,” so he's already learning. :D) She had little plastic manikins and asked him to do things like hand the baby to me (which he did), but when she put a mom figure out and asked him to move the baby “toward” the mommy, he once again picked up the baby and handed it to me. When asked to “touch the block and turn over the cup,” he cocked his head, put the block in the cup, and then turned it on its side.
Paying more attention to our conversations with him with the rest of the day, I started noticing other things she had noted: he needs things demonstrated for him, or he needs gestures to make our directions clearer. Most of his conversing consists of repeating the key words of our own utterances: “Do you want more juice?” “More juice!” While he didn't narrate what he was doing while he did it for her, he does do it for us-but it's usually just nouns and well-known action verbs: “kick soccer ball!” “fall down water!”
This leads me to believe that they'll qualify him for speech. While the stage he's in is perfectly normal, I'm pretty sure it's normal for an earlier developmental stage. He still has to do the cognitive testing-he was getting tired of the assessment and it was way past naptime when they wrapped up-so we won't know until after that how he scores. But I'm hopeful that he's on his way to getting some help.
Also posted at http://kouredios.dreamwidth.org/217618.html ; feel free to comment there if you so choose: add comment/
comments.