Because Jaxson hasn't been very verbal yet Dr Fred thought it would be good to have a visit from a speech therapist. The best thing you can do is stop a speech delay or problem early. So this morning we met Stephanie. She came over at 9am and played until 10:30am or so. She started with some questions for me as far as things he can or can't do. Anything I couldn't answer she tried to get him to demonstrate it through play. Stephanie is the evaluator, she is not trained in any one specific development area. She observes and determines whether he needs help in any area, social, cognitive, speech and then assigns the correct therapist. Not much of a surprise he scored very well in all areas except for speech. Him scoring normal in the cognitive area shows that he is understanding the words but just not sure how to form them himself. Jaxson was at a 8 month level in his speech so he has qualified and is meeting with a speech therapist next week.
Stephanie was very reassuring in that if we change and start doing a few things he will be in a "normal" range very quickly. She would expect to have it be no more than 6 months, which many of the kids in the program can be much longer than that. That makes me hopeful. Some of the new activites we are going to be practicing are:
Focusing on one to two words when talking to Jaxson
Not "reading" books but talking about items in the book. "that is a dog" and sounding items slowly
Holding the object near our mouth when saying the word so he can see how our mouth moves
Give him two to three opportunities to say the item he is pointing at before handing it to him
Not repeating his jargon but correcting him in giving him the correct words
Working on understanding without gestures, "Find the ball" without pointing or gesturing at all
Maybe he will improve so much by next Thursday when Stephanie, and Teri the speech therapist visit it will be the fastest "case" they have worked on.
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