Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Big Brother Hears

Ahh.. relief! Matthew can hear! He can't talk, but his hearing tested down to about 20dB in the booth with earphones on. In a soundfield, I think we got responses down to 10dB. We don't have to buy two sets of hearing aids- yay!!!!

On the other hand, the speech language pathologist there popped in to see him. He was disqualified from Early Intervention at 17 months because they take a "total language" score and his average score was too high. His receptive was in the 133% and his expressive was in the 66%, so his average score was, well- average! At two years old and only 4-6 monosyllabic utterances, though, he is well behind the curve. We'll have him re-tested through EI at a full 2 years (in early January- his birthday is Dec. 22). If he qualifies, we'll do speech through them. If he doesn't (due to high receptive)we'll try to get insurance to cover some sessions through the speech department at the hospital. In the meantime, we're trying sign language and picture boards.

It is interesting because the speech delay issues in our family might influence our communication decisions for Nolan. If he also has speech delay (such as apraxia) in addition to the hearing loss, it might be a while before he can speak. Matthew, with superb hearing, can't imitate simple syllables at the age of 2. Better get out those "Signing Time" videos!!

1 comment:

MB said...

Glad to hear Matthew's hearing test went well!