Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Early Intervention WORKS



Yesterday morning our speech language pathologist arrived with a box full of blocks, toy utensils, a teddy bear, and a testing manual. After having Nolan take a block off the box, put the block in the box, and select various objects, he received a receptive language score of 124%. That score is ABOVE the level of his normal-hearing peers. His expressive ranked at 108%.

This is the kid who couldn't understand simple words like "kitty," "truck," or "cup" two months ago. One month ago, something clicked and he has never looked back! We did identify some language holes (he can only identify one body part and should be able to label four), but overall he is thriving in his language rich environment!

We are sans hearing aids today until we visit the pediatrician. Nolan has a nasty cold with drainage out of one ear which makes me leery of inserting the earmolds. With his hearing test only 2 days away, I want to make sure his PE tubes are open and any infection is addressed!


Yesterday evening the "lady game" (Matthew's term) came to our house to evaluate Matthew. He has already been evaluated for speech and language, so we know he still qualifies for services based on articulation. This testing was a formality to assess his general cognitive skills. We won't have the results back for a week or two, but the psychologist did tell me she's confident he's performing at age level.

The testing was interesting. There were puzzles to put together (Matt got to the five-piece puzzles and was stymied after that). Blocks to build in patterns that matched a template set up by the psychologist (he could do anything with three blocks, but four blocks were a little difficult). Lots of questions for information (he couldn't name the colors in a rainbow, for instance). There were also a lot of receptive language questions. He missed two that I thought he would get- one of a lamp (we don't have bedside lamps, so he isn't familiar with the term) and one of an iron (embarrassing, but I don't iron our clothes very often).

Matt's responses to some of the questions were rather interesting. A selection of his answers are below:

Lady Game: Matthew, can you name some animals?

Matt: Animals live at the zoo.

Lady Game: Can you name some of them?

Matt: My mommy drive me there.


Lady Game: Matt, can you name two items that have wheels?

Matt: A choo choo train!

Lady Game: Can you name a second one?

Matt: Another choo choo!


Lady Game: Matt, what is this picture?

Matt: A banana!

Lady Game: Matt, can you tell me what this is (picture of an iron).

Matt: That a plug on it.

Lady Game: Yes, but what is the whole thing called?

Matt: I go eat banana now.


Testing almost-3 year olds is a job reserved for saints!

4 comments:

MB said...

I don't think Mari has even seen an iron in use either! She saw a play one at Pottery Barn kids the other day and put it in the play stroller on top of the baby doll.

Good job on your tests, boys!

Herding Grasshoppers said...

I love the dialog with Matt :0)

And way to go Nolan!!! (and MOM!)

Look at all that SNOW!!!!!!! Oh, my boys are jealous.

Julie

Anonymous said...

Early Intervention does work, but so does stellar parenting! That's fantastic news! For what it's worth, Ethan has never even laid eyes on an iron :-)

Landry said...

Hilarious!! Amen for early intervention!!