The other day I had Early Intervention come out and do an evaluation on Nolan to see if he had a speech delay. He speaks fewer words than most kids his age and it had me a little worried. Believe me, this was one of the toughest pills that I've ever had to swallow because the whole time you're pregnant the only thing constantly on your mind is having a healthy baby boy or girl. He's completely healthy but a mother's intuition is very strong and I just feel like he should be saying more than he has been. He's only been in daycare for 3 months, so I'm hoping the exposure to the other kids will encourage him to talk as well.
Two therapists came. One was a developmental therapist and the other was a speech therapist. I guess the developmental therapist comes to see if there's anything wrong developmentally with the child that's keeping him from speaking such as autism. But his development is fine. He doesn't have autism and the evaluation determined that he only had problems with speech and listening to what someone was saying to him. If he had autism, I would have been fully prepared to handle that as well. Nolan is my child and I'm going to love him regardless, but being the loving and active child that he is, I knew he didn't have autism. So they're going to do speech therapy with him once per week to get him up to speed with the other kids. We, his parents, are going to constantly work with him at home to reinforce the sessions as well.
Growing up, I've seen the kids in my classes that were slower than others, and I always wondered if their parents worked with them on their school work. My mother's first career was teaching. She taught in elementary school and made sure that me and my sister were not only on track with the rest of our classmates, but we were ahead of the class most of the time. To me, that's a gift, and that's the same gift that I want to pass on to Nolan. I never want him to feel like he's not good enough or as smart as the other kids. He's already too smart for his own good. Anything you do he automatically imitates, and once we get his speech in line I'm sure he'll be unstoppable.
Besides making sure he's on the same level with other children his age, we need to know when something is wrong with him. A friend of mine has a daughter the same age as Nolan and when she didn't feel good she was able to tell her mom. I would give anything to know exactly what's hurting my son, be it a tummy ache, tooth ache, or sore throat. When our babies are infants they can only tell us that something is wrong by crying, but at this stage children are usually able to indicate what's bothering them. I want to be able to help my son when he is in need, and communication is definitely the key.
Sooooo, instead of all the trucks, trains, and other loud boy toys that they have out there for Christmas, we'll be getting him educational toys, that will still be fun of course.
