Speech

Garrett had his speech evaluated about a month ago. The assessment given was the CAAP which had Garrett say what he saw on various pictures. He was so funny during the evaluation, telling stories about each picture that only I could understand and playing like he didn't know some of the pictures saying "What's that?"

But his responses...

tat as cat

pid as pig

oo shoe

dut as duck

and many more...

configured into a scale score of 54. He was said to be more than 6 months behind and in another area was about a year behind, labeling him as having a severe delay.

I was pretty much unimpressed with the speech therapist as she rushed us out the door and suggested strategies for the wrong speech issue.

We went to our first therapy appointment where things seemed very frazzled and disorganized. Garrett was not very responsive to the developmentally inappropriate activities and I was again unimpressed and kind of upset.

After talking to Kevin about it, I decided I would email the entire situation to the owner of the company and we were placed with a new speech therapist.

We began seeing her two weeks ago and couldn't be happier! Garrett loves going to speech, talks about his "peet," his "homewoot," and his "teetoo" all the time. She was concerned about his last evaluation because she doesn't use that particular tool and she thought based on the score presented that he would have been just about nonverbal. She conducted the Goldman-Fristoe on him and he came out with a scale score of 54 on this one. According to this, his speech is in the 7th percentile and his age equivalency is less than two. The therapist expressed that this does not take his language into consideration and that his high vocabulary compensates for his articulation difficulties. Definitely think the year of ear infections might have something to do with all of this!

He has been working on the G and K sounds and can definitely make them! But he chooses not to unless we are specifically practicing them. He is also overcompensating which means words like cat are not longer tat but they are KAK when we are practicing. It's so cool to hear him make sounds he's never made before! But in typical Garrett fashion, he does it when he WANTS to!

We have an evaluation with the school system on April 1st to see if he needs early intervention with the school system through preschool services since speech issues can lead to learning issues if not resolved before beginning reading and phonics learning.

I don't think it will be long before he's talking like a "big boy" and I think it might be a sad day when his baby talk is gone!