So I promised an update for our speech therapy appointment this week. Here it is in a nutshell, He’s fine.
Here’s the more detailed version…Keep in mind it was only one test, but it does give us some good information.
The test (and I can’t remember the name) measures both expressive (what he says) and receptive (what he understands) speech. The mean score is 100. Normal is considered 15 above or 15 below that 100.
With his expressive speech, which includes his speech sounds, putting 2 or more words together etc. He scored a 90. Still technically in the normal range, but at the low end, which we knew and expected. The receptive score which measures his understanding of language, parts of speech (such as adjectives, verbs, colors, pronouns and shapes). He scored 114. The speech therapist said his was the highest score that she’d ever had on that part of the test and was very impressed with his understanding of language.
The average of his two scores then gives us his overall score which is 102. This means he’s right at the mean for his age. The speech therapist basically said we could do a number of things from here. Our insurance won’t pay for therapy if he tests normal (and even then they don’t pay for things that are termed “developmental delays”). She also said we could try getting therapy through our school system (which would be free), however it could also be difficult to get it through them because he tests normal. She said if we did get therapy she thought we wouldn’t probaby need more than 3 months or so. The other option is to wait and see where he is in a few months. She thinks he’s “on the bubble” and will probably really develop in speech in the next few months. We’re probably going to wait.
She did give us some good hints for how to help him develop his speech more here at home. Basically it’s “be Sesame Street” Narrate our lives (which we kind of thought we already did, but apparently we could do more). Things like “we’re going up up up the stairs. Where are we going? up up up!” Exhausting and silly sounding, but he looks thoroughly entertained.
So basically we have a normal kid who just doesn’t feel like talking. We’ve been reminded several times lately that Einstein didn’t talk until he was 5.