Speech

Today we had Sam’s speech evaluation. This is a girl who needs to go to school. LOL

She sat her down at a table and asked her questions for about 1:15 and Sam was SO GOOD and sat their the whole time. She thought it was the best thing. (We play ‘school’ with her at nights sometimes too, she adores it.)

I missed the first part because… G pooped. I went to change him. Realized his poop was coming out of his diaper. Realized it was on my shirt. I didn’t have another shirt. I had another G outfit though. Whew. Except then I realized I only had 1 wipe left and the rest of the wipes were in the car. *sigh* Luckily toilet paper wetted down worked. Ugh.

Anyway. I had to add that story in, hehe.

But I walk in and she’s at the table with some toys. The questions were funny and also posed difference scenarios.

“You take one cup. Give one cup to me. Give one cup to the bear.”
And then had a flip book and she asked all sorts of questions. They were neat to hear and neat to watch Sam identify everything. The first part was her listening and recognition skills. She used another word later for it, but I forget it because G was super fussy, it was waaay past his nap time. (J knows, I will have to ask him later) But after she was getting into the questions in the 4 1/2 – 5 year old range, she wanted to stop. They ‘hit the ceiling’ and are able to determine where they are in the percentile range when they get five questions in a row wrong. But while Sam would get one or two questions wrong, she would then get a few questions right… so we never hit that ceiling! So that was cool. But we never hit that ceiling because after almost 30min of those type of questions, she wanted to move on to be sure we got through the whole evaluation.

I think we live in a crazy area though because our Dr and this evaluator were very happy that Sam knew her colors, numbers, and letters and mentioned that it was a Kindergarten thing. But EVERY child around Sam’s age I know (I don’t know to many – but you know what I mean) knows all that stuff! And more! I was talking to my Mom’s BF and she teaches Elementary school and was talking about Preschool up in the LA area and some of them (the crazy ones, I guess) require them to know ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ in five different languages.

Since Sam is past the cutoff (December 2 to turn 5 in California) she won’t start Kindergarten for three more years. We were at Target the other day and saw an old friend from Gymboree who was two days younger than Sam, so he was past the cutoff as well and I was asking her about it. Her response… “Well, I’m trying to fight it so I can get him in (in two years) because, I mean, he’s pretty much READING right now”. OMG! (This kid is super cute though, and I don’t doubt it, but I am still amazed that he is reading…) I am also not surprised because another one of Sam’s friends that she plays with every week is also pretty much reading, her Mom tells me. She is three months older though, so I feel a little better. haha

Anyway, back to speech… She scored in the 86% for her ‘whatever’ it was that I talked about above (even though she never reached the ceiling – but we just ran out of time) and in the 70% in something else… Again, I was walking G around and ‘jiggling’ him…

But her point was while Sam has some problems with some of her consonants, it is pretty much ‘baby speak’ and she will grow out of it. She is able to make most of the sounds when she trys, but most of the time they don’t come out right. If she doesn’t grow out of it by the time she is 4, we can take her back but the type of therapy they do for this kind of thing, it is to young for 2 year olds.

She talked about three specific things that Sam had problems with – one was that she says ‘T’ instead of ‘K’ (having trouble with the cup, cookie, kite – words), another was her S’s (“poon” instead of “spoon”) , and another was something else… Her ‘ing’ words… Eating, drinking, etc. I have three different worksheets for Sam to work on once a week. As well as the fact that in most cases, if there is two consonants together, she drops the second one.

By working on, she just said that it’s important for us to just say the words for her. So she can hear them. She doesn’t want us to force her to repeat them, she just wants us to say them.

We are guilty of letting Sam get away with ‘silly’ words for things.

Nee, nee – instead of Night Night
Gaagoo – instead of Doggie
BrahBrah – instead of Grandma

So we just need to reinforce the correct word after she says it.

It’s all interesting. The two times we have been to this place and really been wonderful. These people were awesome, friendly, and helpful, I really enjoyed it. I’m so glad there are places here like that for children. They also work with all ages.

She recommended preschool too but I will definitely wait until the Holiday’s are over with before I proceed more with that, or think about it. I have been bookmarking all sorts of preschools to start looking into for the past year. Definitely by next year (Aug/Sep of 2009) but maybe a little earlier.

She also has to be potty trained for most of those things, which she is NOT. And has no desire to be. So I really have no desire to force it at this point. Another issue, another post…