More on Alex

Alex had his appointment today for the follow up on possible speech therapy. General consensus is this: He's too smart for his own good.

He does have speech delays. He is missing sounds that he should have learned during those periods when he had little to no hearing. However, we're going to have to go the extra mile to get him help.

Because I didn't have a written referral, only a verbal one, they simply tested him to see if he was lacking skills in a specific developmental area. If he qualified for services there, then they could include the speech therapist in the other area. If he didn't, then I would have to get a specific referral/prescription from the ent or audiologist for therapy and they would evaluate him again.

They evaluated him in 5 categories. Three of them were cognitive skills, motor skills and communication. I don't remember the other two. Average 2 year olds score between 85 and 115 -- usually depending on how new a 2 or how close to a 3 they are. To qualify for services, a child has to score below 78.

Alex's lowest score was a 109 in communication and his highest was a 121 in motor skills. Most of his scores were well above the 115 norm-high. They said he was solving puzzles and showing skills that even some 4 and 5 year olds struggle with. On average, they said that he functioned at a level of a 3-4 year old and said that that explained his lack of connection with other children his age and his self-isolation when with his peers.

Alex definitely showed them his speech problems, however, because he is "higher functioning" he's adapted to those problem and learned other ways to communicate. They tried to find another way to offer him speech therapy, but basically said that he just scored too high every where. They sort of explained not being able to help him but the reason they felt a need for me to keep pursuing help like this: if a normal 2 year old showed the issues he was having, his communication scores would have dropped below normal and qualify for help; or if a 3-4 year old child (that functions the way he does) scored this way, the communication score would again qualify him for help; but because he is a 2 year old functioning at a 3 year old level, there is a gap in the system that he falls through. The only way to correct this is through having the ent or audiologist prescribe the help. Unless they do, the therapists we saw today were worried that his speech would not correct itself completely and he would always have a slight "hearing impaired accent".

The plan of action now is to wait until his appointment in February. The speech therapist did give me a few suggestions to try at home, which I've already been doing, but will continue to work on. Then we'll take the results of his hearing test and where he's at speech wise, get a referral, and go back to Early Steps and have them help us go from there.