We still are not 100% sure of what diagnosis Little Man has, but all arrows are pointing to Verbal Apraxia...you can find a lot of information about that here: http://www.apraxia-kids.org/ It's been a long road and a lot of hearing "Oh, he'll get it" and "He's just letting Big Girl talk for him" and "He's so smart, it will come"...all the encouragement in the world is great, but when you are living this day in and day out and your only wish is to hear your son make a noise in his crib so you know he's awake or to have him say "Mama" after 26 months - it can be mentally and emotionally exhausting.
We have some good news coming though - we finally got our appointment with a large hospital for a developmental and speech evaluation for June 27th - it sounds crazy, but I had to put in about 20 pages of paper work about a month an a half ago to get an appointment in 2 months. I've been told that we got the quickest appointment around! We will have our parent meeting on July 11th to discuss all of the testing and results and possibly get a diagnosis, so we can make sure we're treating Little Man with the right therapies and techniques.
For now, Little Man gets therapy for speech and language 2-3 times a week. We absolutely love his developmental therapist Katie - she's been with us since he was 7 months old. She has witnessed many of Little Man's milestones and has seen my tears of joy and frustration. No one ever wishes to see their child have a developmental delay or a disability, but I am eternally grateful to the people who help make it possible who know that my child will be able to be successful in the world.
Katie goes to LM's daycare and shows his teachers what methods are best to get LM to communicate and she comes home for home visits to help us learn too. It's the best of both worlds. We also have a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) who comes every other week to assist with LM. She was on a once a month consult, but now with this possible Apraxia diagnosis, we upped her services. LM is a little more reluctant to work with his SLP, but he's getting there...for the first time a few weeks ago, he sat in her lap and gave her some big hugs and kisses...this of course was after he pointed to the door and told her in his own sign/body language to "go".
About a month ago, LM had therapy at home and we introduced communication cards. He was hesitant at first, but Katie laid them out and asked him what he wanted to do...and LM pointed to the car and then TV. Yes, he wanted to watch his Truck DVD on TV. Precious and totally him. We were able to get him to move towards playing with his cars and trucks instead of watching them on TV. We had some success with at a few word/sounds - he said /ruck/ for /truck/ and /o/ when pointing to the card for the song "Old MacDonald". He also attempted /stop/ when he wanted us to stop singing. More recently, this week, we're working on doing the initial sound and quickly shoving in the second sound to trick him into saying the word. So far it's worked for /up/...he does it one time and forgets it an hour later...but it's still progress.
The hard thing about Apraxia, is that he will use the word once and then we don't hear it again. We have to prompt him all the time to say a word - his only word that he consistently says unprompted is /ruck/. We don't have any word for mommy or daddy. It's hard when Big Girl asks me, "When will he say my name when he wants me?" or "Mommy, what will my name sound like when he says it?" I often wonder the same thing...
1 comment:
We've wondered many of the same things. Our son also does not say Mom/Mama but says Dada.
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