He Can Talk!

I'm a bit behind on updates for Alex's speech issues as well!  You may remember last year Alex was diagnosed with a Severe Phonological Disorder.  At the time, people outside the family could rarely understand him and he left a lot of sounds out when speaking.  He qualified to go to special preschool for speech problems, but because he was not potty trained we decided to continue with the at home services he was already getting bi-weekly and wait until January.  

Well January rolled around and he still was not potty trained, and was making big strides with his speech.  Because he turned 3 after the cut off period, he could continue to receive at home services until August.  So I made the call to just keep doing what we were doing instead of putting him in the school.  Now it's August and I once again have to make a judgment call!  Except this time he is no longer eligible for the at home program so it's the preschool or nothing (although he does already go to a Montessori preschool full time, it just doesn't have speech therapists).

The at home program did a speech evaluation and found him to be in normal ranges for his age.  This did not surprise me, because they said he was normal last year too and then we had him formally evaluated by an actual pathologist and they said his delay was severe.  At this point I do not think he has a severe delay anymore, but I am not sure he is in the normal ranges.  There are still sounds he doesn't pronounce currently and he is still difficult to understand at times.  So I decided to have him formally evaluated again by the preschool's speech pathologists.  I wanted to be sure that he was in normal ranges before everyone dropped services and forgot about him.

He did great with the testing - he listened and did and said everything that was asked of him.  (I'll pretend I didn't bribe him with getting a new toy if he behaved for the testing).  The results were great!  Alex is within normal ranges for his gender and age and there were no signs of the severe phonological delay he had last year!  He still has a couple of minor issues - a frontal lisp (pushes his tongue to the front while speaking) and some broken blends (when two consonants are together he sometimes drops one) and she gave us come handouts and tips on how to continue to work on these at home.  Here's a little video of Alex talking:

Interview

I did a little interview with the kids last week. It's really cute and does a good job of showing Alex's speech problems.

Phonological Disorder

I realized that I haven't really said anything about Alex's speech, and since I am trying to document the kids' milestones as much as possible, I thought I should do a post on it.

As a baby, Alex had severe reflux and constant ear infections. He was always congested. He was on several different meds for reflux and "preventative" antibiotics that basically did nothing for his ear problems. After many, many doctor's appointments, ENT appointments, and hearing tests he had ear tubes put in at 14 months. He grew out of the reflux around 18 months and was weaned off the meds.

He didn't really start using words until after his ear tubes were put in, and was very difficult to understand. At 18 months our pediatrician referred us to Early Intervention. They assessed him and agreed that he had a delay and began weekly occupational and speech therapy sessions.

Today he talks a lot and uses sentences, but it is difficult for people outside of the family to understand him unless it is in context. He generally leaves off the beginning or ending sounds. With blends (br, st, sn) he will do one sound or the other, or leave it off completely. 'Snack" is "nak", "milk" is 'nilk", "Diego" is 'iego'.

A few weeks ago we had him tested to see if he qualifies for a local preschool that specializes in speech problems. He was diagnosed with a 'Severe Phonological Disorder'. It basically means he does not use sounds appropriately for his age. At nearly 3 years old, outsiders should understand him 75% of the time. That does not happen. They are positive it is because of his ear and congestion problems during the most critical time to learn sounds. His comprehension and reasoning, however, is way above average. During the test he understood concepts and questions at a 4 year old level. I thought that was awesome.

So he qualifies for the preschool, but for their phonological classes (which are 3 hours, 2 days a week) they prefer them to be 3+ years and somewhat self sufficient. So the current plan is to keep with the weekly sessions from Early Intervention, and then put him in the more intensive preschool session in January. We'll evaluate everything in December and make sure that is still the best option for him.