I wanted to give those of you who have been following me for awhile an update on Braxton’s speech therapy journey. (To see my last post about this, click here.)
Most children hit their “speech milestone” around 18 months old. By 2 years old, children are expected to start stringing together words and phrases, and have an expanded vocabulary beyond just naming objects and saying “momma” and “dada.” Braxton never hit these “milestones.” We continually practiced with him, followed up with his pediatrician, and had him evaluated twice by ECI. (Early Childhood Intervention.) Both evaluations showed he had a speech delay, but because he didn’t have any other delays (cognitive or motor), he didn’t “qualify” for services. By the time he was 2 1/2 years old, we decided to push for getting him some help. I wasn’t too worried about it because I could understand him and his needs so there was no anger, frustration or tantrums because of his lack of speech, but I did notice he was getting “left behind” socially. At playgrounds he would want to play with other kids, but since he couldn’t verbalize to them that he wanted to play, they would often just run off. This broke my heart and told me that it was time to get him help.
It was actually a long process which required us to get our pediatrician involved to finally get him into a private speech therapist office. Getting children qualified to get help shouldn’t be that hard and it’s something that needs to change. If a child is delayed and needs help, they should have access to it. But I digress.
So by November 2018 we had him set up with a speech therapist 1 day a week. Not even a month into it, he had already shown immense progress. His vocabulary was expanding, and he was trying to string together two words at a time. By 6 months into speech therapy he was saying phrases, and was 80% caught back up to kids his age. 9 months later, he had “graduated” from speech therapy and was caught back up. I learned so much by attending some of his sessions, and his speech therapist had some great insight into why he was “delayed.” She pointed out that part of the reason for his delay was his personality. He is extremely shy at first, and he doesn’t like to be “wrong.” So before he would ever say a word out loud, he would practice it over and over in his head, whisper it to himself and then finally say the word. This is why he was never behind on his cognitive testing because he understood everything, he just didn’t want to verbalize anything in case he was “wrong.”
All in all, I’m glad we did put him in speech therapy. He still has trouble with some letter sounds, but he is much more willing to try now. He and I both came out of it with tools to help each other. If you feel like your child needs help, don’t ever feel like you are a nuisance when advocating for them!