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| Addi riding on a pony. |
Sorry that it's been so long since I've last blogged. I'm having trouble with Blogger. I think it stems from having a computer that's from the stone ages. It just may be time for a new one. I've figured out how to blog in the mean time, so we're good for now. =)
So, let's talk about Addi! Back in May, we visited with our doctor about concerns with Addi speech. Evan, Payton, and now, Karsyn have always more than met their speech milestones. Addi, on the other hand, has always just met her milestones -it's always been kind of a close call.
Unlike Evan, Payton, and Karsyn, Addi had frequent ear infections when she was a baby. From the time Addi was 3 months, until she had tubes at 18 months, she constantly battled ear infections. It was awful! The ear infections caused some hearing loss. After Addi had surgery, she passed all of her hearing tests.
Our pediatrician referred us to the sweetest Speech Pathlologist, named Lori. I think if she and I had met under different circumstances, we'd be great friends. She came to our house to evaluate Addi in May. Addi's test scores were a little confusing. She tested above her age group in some cateregories and below in others.
Lori decided to have her collegue, Susan, come to our house to retest Addi a few days later. Again, our little Addi gave us a mixed bag of testing scores. She's always been the kind of girl to go against the grain - ha! Susan gave us some 'homework' to work on with Addi while we waited for insurance approval, referrals, and all of those super fun things. =)
In June, we took Addi in for her 4 year-old check up and found out that there was a hang up in the referral process. We got that all straightened out and then had to wait for our insurance. During that time, the speech center was contracted by our local hospital for therapy. That meant two things. We could do Addi's speech therapy in town. Yay! But, we were in for another round of referrals and insurance approvals. Boo!
That all leads us to last Wednesday. We had Addi's first speech therapy appointment. She went through another round of testing, only her results were much different. This time, Addi tested so well, that she just barely quaifies for our insurance to even cover speech therapy. Susan was amazed with how much progress Addi has made since May. Addi will have a few more sessions of speech therapy and we'll have a lot more homework to do with her. We're really excited to see all of the improvement that she has made in such a short amount of time. It's been a great blessing!
So glad to hear she has made so much progress! We are still thinking about enrolling in speech therapy for Brody. I had hoped he would make more progress this summer while Eddie and I have been with him more, and while Eddie has been able to get him to say a few more words, he still doesn't want to use even the words he knows consistently. He prefers grunting, pointing, signing, and any other form of "communication" rather than language. *Sigh* I really feel that it is mostly stubbornness because he doesn't seem to have any trouble with hearing or problems making different sounds. While speech and occupational therapy is covered by his insurance, we will still have to come out of pocket for the large co-pay so we were really hoping he would just start on his own. I just have no experience with a child who won't talk since Evan was such a great early talker and was always easy to understand. Any tips from a more experienced parent? :-)
ReplyDeleteHere's what's been helping Addi. These were all insturctions from her speech path. First, we have to make sure that when we ask Addi a question, that Addi answers. Evan and Payton LOVE to talk for Addi and they some times talk over Addi, so we've really been working on that. We also worked on giving Addi lots of choices over little things, like what color bowl or cup she wanted or which shirt she wants to wear. We used a lot of imagination play. We pretended to camp, go fishing...just anything. We were told to have days where we changed up her routine. That was kind of a hard one. I love having the kids on a schedule. We read to her A LOT! I had Evan and Payton read to her too. Doing those things really drew more words and conversation from her. We still have some work to do in that area, along with letter blending.
DeleteIf Brody does need speech therapy, you will more than likely get a lot of things to work on at home with him. So, it may only warrent going to a few sessions. I know that I've spent a lot of time being worried about Addi, so I'm glad that we started this process.
Thanks, Tracy! We are definitely going to pursue speech therapy in the coming months if he doesn't start talking more soon. He actually did talk a little more this past week while we were at the beach (change of routine maybe?) and while we were riding in the car. I was pointing out objects and really stressing the words to him, and he was repeating them (hat, cup, shoes, glasses, etc.). We have just had a busier summer than we planned and now school is about to start back. *Sigh* Hopefully, that change of routine will inspire even more speech progress. :-)
DeleteThank you for sharing this and I'm glad to hear how well things are going. Rachel's speech has just taken off since we started her in therapy. And man, all that "what will insurance cover?" stuff is so frustrating when you are just trying to HELP your child. Thinking of you guys...
ReplyDeleteawesome, glad it's working out so well "_
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