Speech Progress

Graham has been in speech for ten months now.  When he turns three in a few weeks, he will no longer be eligible for the birth-to-three program, and we've elected not to pursue having him accessed for further language services through the school district.

A couple weeks ago, the lady who did his initial assessment came to our regular weekly in-home appointment to review his progress.  As she read off the goals we'd set last October, I was shocked at how simple they seemed.  Things like:

"Put together two-word phrases"

"Say names of siblings (or even an approximation)"

He's so far beyond all of those goals, that now they seem silly.  Don't get me wrong.  The boy is still struggling mightily with his articulation (one estimate puts him around the 4th percentile), but his language skills are now in the normal to slightly above average range.  Hurrah!

So, we have a kid who talks in complex, complete sentences, only we can't understand half of it! Haha!

Graham enjoys his weekly speech sessions, which are really just a play date with him and his speech therapist, Bella.  Last week he told me, "Bella is my friend!"

Personally, I think the weekly (hour long) sessions are a bit of overkill.  In the interest of efficiency (both cost and time), I'd suggest a session every month to six weeks, with the last 20 minutes of those sessions being training for me from the therapist.  But, since our insurance was willing to pay for all the sessions, I kept my opinions to myself.  

Here's a video from a couple months ago of me trying to get Graham to say "Daddy."  He has a terrible time getting consonants on the beginning of his words.

Here's another fun video of the aftermath of G spilling his smoothie all over himself:

And finally, here's a totally random video of what my normal life is like with three busy, noisy boys (who all think they need to be right next to me and talk at the same time):