My blog is totally my happy place, where I want to remember all the amazing things that we did with the kids. I also want to capture all the things that are happening in the kids' life and because of that I can't ignore Jbird's speech delay.
Last August when we took him to his 2-year appointment, his Dr was concerned that he wasn't saying much. I personally wasn't worried about it because he was barely 2 and had an older brother that deciphered everything for him. Also, if you knew my hubby in real life you would know that he is a man of few words and I was just sure that Jbird was just like his father.
Like father like son, these two are totally two peas in a pod
We decided to start working with Jbird one on one, spending more time encouraging him to use his words to ask for things, and we even bought a colorful alphabet rug to get him familiar with letters. It worked great, Jbird was recognizing colors, letters, numbers but he still wasn't using words to communicate with us. He went to barely having 10 words to having over 60 words in a 4-month span. He also started daycare at 2 so we hoped that it would be a huge boost.
Jbird is such an expressive kid I tell you
After 5 months and still no clear communication using words, we decided to go ahead and do the tests. We did a hearing test that came back perfect. Jbird can hear, he just chooses not to respond to us. That kid I tell you, we were so happy to know that he didn't have any hearing issues.
I can hear you mommy, what up?
Jbird is my mini-me, I think he looks so much like me though he behaves completely like hubby
After the hearing test we got a Reel 3 speech evaluation done. It was determined
that Jbird had a speech delay, he was was on the poor scale compare to other kids his age,
that's two steps below the average.
We followed up with additional more in depth tests to analyze more than just his speech. It was determined that Jbird performed at the following age level in these areas:
Expressive language - 18 months
Receptive language - 16 months
Gross motor - 20 months
Fine motor - 20 months
Cognitive - 21 months
Personal social - 13 months (I told you he was a baby)
Adaptive - 29 months
Based on these results, it was determined that Jbird would benefit from early intervention and starting in a few weeks, a speech therapist will be coming to our house once a week to work with Jbird for an hour. they are also going to give us pointers on what we can do to help and encourage him.
Jbird is always surrounded by his brothers :)
Check out Bean hanging out in the background
We are so happy to have a possible answer and solution to our Jbird's lack of communication using words. He still acts like a complete baby, even more so than Bean. That's my mama's boy. We communicate well just without words and we want to encourage him to use words.
The face he made after tasting a blueberry, he clearly didn't like it.
As we start this journey of speech therapy and such, I jump for joy every time Jbird says something to me using words even if it doesn't makes sense. Some of the stuff that he said recently that we loved:
"I stink ewwww" or "I pooped" clearly someone is ready for potty training :).
"mommy, mommy, baby Nathan" he knows his brother's name :)
"wipe nose"
"give back"
"I stuck"
Jbird is a happy and sweet kid. We just need to encourage him to use his words. I know one day I will complain about how much he talks non stop, I can't wait to get there. Until then, we are going to create an environment that foster and encourage Jbird to communicate with us using more words.
I love this second boy of mine to pieces and I am so lucky that he returns the favor.
Speech delay or not, Jbird is still the sweetest little boy and like his Dr said, it's the best possible problem you can have with a kid (if you are going to have any kind of problem) because there are things that can be done to help him along the way. That is Jbird's story of speech delay, I hope to come back with lots of awesome updates soon.
My hubby also had speech delay as a child. He's older sister did most of his talking for him and he, like your hubby, is a man of few words. I tease him some times that he can be a man of "no" words, lol. In his defense, he says he made a conscious effort not to speak...but I don't know how far true that is...lol. But like you said, as "problems" go, this would be one of the ones to stress over the least. And he's a happy little boy and that's the most important thing!
ReplyDeleteI didn't even notice when we were there. He seemed to communicate just fine but I gotcha. Better to get it figured out and worked on now than later.
ReplyDeleteI love your positive outlook on things. He'll be just great. He has 2-brothers that will get him to talk A LOT in the coming years so he probably figures "why rush?" :-).
My nephew is speech delayed too. We wondered if it was because he was an only child and didn't interact with kids much but there isn't always an explanation. Sometimes it just happens! It's good to catch it and work on it now before he hits school. He will catch up he probably just needs a little bit of extra help. My nephew has already improved a lot and with some kids I think it
ReplyDeletejust takes more time.
Its good you caught it early and can now make provisions to improve it. It sounds like he's well on his way to improve and it can only get better from here.
ReplyDeleteGlad you have the answers and a solution and within a short time he will be talking up a storm! Go Jbird!!
ReplyDeleteGood luck to j bird, glad that you guys caught it early. I'm not sure if this would be a factor but a few of my friends have kids that have speech delays. One is in therapy and making progress (yay!) and the other two it was determined that because they were exposed to three languages they were a bit behind in speaking. My little bro had a speech something when he was younger and did therapy too. Just telling you all this to say, it more common than people might think. Go jbird!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you guys so much for your kinds words and for sharing similar stories. We were surprised to find out that this was way more common than we thought.
ReplyDelete