Matt has been doing really well in speech therapy. When he started speech at the age of 2, he had severe articulation, moderate expressive, and mild receptive language delays. By the age of three, the receptive language score was above average, and the expressive was average (with a severe articulation delay).
We recently had him evaluated with the Arizona Articulation Proficiency Scale, and the results were a mild delay, only one standard deviation away from "normal." He still completely lacks the /r/ sound, but this is a later developing sound in children. He also lacks the /ch/ and /sh/ sounds, pronouncing them as /ts/ and /s/, respectively. The only sounds that placed him in the "delayed" category were vowel sounds attached to /r/, because the lack of the /r/ sound distorts the vowels. For instance, the word "chair" would be pronounced "cha-oh," which distorts the long a sound in the word.
Since Matt has an isolated speech delay, the rapid ascent to the "mild" category means that he will probably graduate speech therapy this spring. Since we currently have five speech therapy sessions per week between both boys, this will free up our schedule considerably. Over the next several months we are going to focus on the final /r/ sound to help clear up those words, and we will work on the /ch/ and /sh/ sounds as well. It looks like Matt is going to leave the world of IEP's altogether this year, which is very good news!
As for Mr. Nolan, he is also doing well. I haven't heard anything about his transition meeting. I need to give our EI coordinator a call, because we have so many medical appointments this spring that I don't want to have his meeting scheduled when we are in the hospital or at an appointment. We hope to keep his current speech therapy schedule, but it is likely that we will be dropped down to 2x per week (closer to the standard speech therapy quantity for the school district).
I did call our audiologist to reschedule Nolan's hearing test. It was originally scheduled for April 12, but having a hearing test the day before his scheduled tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy, and PE tubes seems rather useless. He'll still have a conductive component because of fluid/negative pressure, so I rescheduled for May 20. By May, any swelling from the tonsillectomy should be gone and he should be free of middle ear fluid.
We have been having many restless nights: last night he woke at 1:00am and went back to sleep at 4:00am- itching (he has a persistent rash on his torso that never really goes away), crying, and saying he hurt... but we couldn't get him to tell us where he hurt. I deeply hope he doesn't have another ear infection forming, and I also pray that we'll be able to get more sleep SOON!
3 comments:
Ahhh, those sleepless nights. Hope it turns out to be nothing. We've had a stomach virus. If you can picture this:
starting to get in bed around 11pm, 1yo starts throwing up buckets. After 4 baths (plus throwing up again in 2 of those) and an hour and a half, he finally seems like he's under control. Crawl into bed at 1:30 only to awake at 2am with 2nd child down. Repeat this through all 6 of the older children and it makes for one crazy night and yucky day! The upside, William and Calvin (the baby) have thus far been spared. Hope it stays that way!
Hooray for Matt!! He's really come a long way pretty quickly!
I wonder if Nolan "hurt" from all the itching? You know how sometimes itches "hurt" so to speak. Praying it's not another ear infection and that sleepless nights turn into restfull ones!
Oh, and I know you already know this, but your boys are just so dang cute! I love seeing all your pictures!
That's great you're so close to speech therapy graduation! The hard work pays off!
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