Speak Freely

A few years ago, before she turned two, we had Nora evaluated by early intervention for her speech, when we were concerned about her lack of words.

Today, Nora was evaluated again. Girlfriend has words—a lot of them. She doesn’t stop talking. But this time, it was about understanding what she says.

I mentioned in my recent post about kindergarten that Nora’s preschool teacher told us at her parent-teacher conference in January that she thought Nora could benefit from some speech therapy for her pronunciation. We were given a referral to speak to the necessary people in our school district, and then we set up an appointment for someone from one of our local agencies to come and evaluate her. This process took over a month, but today was the day.

Last night, we told Nora that a couple of “teachers” would be coming to our house in the morning to play with her and ask her a lot of questions, like taking a test. “Yay!” she responded. This morning, she was really excited for their arrival and asked us, “They’re coming only for me, right? Not Vivienne?” She wanted the attention to be all hers. :) 

When the two women arrived—one speech pathologist and one developmental psychologist—Nora did not hesitate to lead them into the family room and settle in on the floor with them to begin. WITHOUT Michael and me (we stayed in the kitchen). The speech pathologist worked with her while I answered numerous questions for the psychologist, and then they switched. The whole process took about an hour, and Nora was being tested the entire time. Even though we called them about her speech, they performed a comprehensive preschool evaluation on her. They looked at her speech-language, cognitive, motor, and social skills, and in several different areas within those categories. Then they scored her in those areas and reported back to us their findings.

First of all… speech. The reason we had her evaluated in the first place. Not surprisingly, she qualifies for services because of her trouble with sounds. I think the pathologist said that she identified 22 (or uh… 19? 29? somewhere in there) different sounds that Nora has trouble with. They determined she is “moderately delayed” in this area, thus qualifying her for speech therapy. Otherwise, Nora scored well within normal limits for her expressive and receptive language skills, even putting her in the range of 6-7 year old children in some areas. So, said the pathologist, for a little girl with so much to say, we should get her some help with pronouncing it all. :) 

I know next to nothing about speech pathology, so it was interesting to hear her explanation of it. She said that young children take shortcuts with pronouncing certain sounds. It’s easier to say “baff” than it is to say “bath,” or “dovel” instead of “shovel,” so they do. As they grow, the more and more they hear and say these sounds, their language and pronunciation evolves. But with some children, the wrong pronunciations basically become a bad habit, and it takes some extra work to re-train their brains to speak the words correctly.

Anyway, the speech pathologist is recommending twice weekly speech therapy for Nora, for 30 minutes each time. She said that she thinks that with the therapy, Nora will make some really huge strides pretty quickly. But given that we will receive her therapy through the school district, she will only receive it during the school year, which will leave us with only a couple of months before summer vacation. In all likelihood, she will probably need to pick back up services at school once she begins kindergarten in the fall.

That was the other interesting thing that came out of the evaluation today. As I mentioned, a developmental psychologist also evaluated her on cognitive, motor, and social skills. Nora scored on the high end of “normal” (or even above the normal range) in all of these areas. They marveled at her attention span, since she sat through the entire hour of testing without issue, never once asking if they were almost done, never getting up, etc. As part of their questioning of us as her parents, they noted that her birthday falls within the timeframe in which some parents decide to hold back their children an extra year before school, and asked us our plans. When we told them we had long debated but that we’re currently planning to send her (barring any major issues arising between now and then), they said that in their opinions, she is READY. The speech pathologist even said that she thinks it’ll be better for her speech improvement and therapy for her to be in kindergarten.

It’s amazing, the little signs that life gives you when you need a little extra reassurance that you’re doing the right thing.

Nora will still have her kindergarten screening at her future school in May, at which point she’ll be evaluated by additional professionals—including another speech pathologist—but I’m feeling good about all of this. We’re getting her the help she needs for speech, she’s obviously growing and learning at preschool, and we’re on track for kindergarten.

Pardon my gushing, but I’m just so proud of this girl. I don’t get an opportunity to write about my kids that much anymore (and sometimes I struggle with whether I even should, but that’s a story for another day). I KNOW I’m biased. But man, I love her to pieces.

And for the record, I’m really going to miss it when she no longer says that her sister’s name is “Bivienne.” :) I will cherish her “baby talk” as long as it lasts, even if she was supposed to outgrow it by now. I know that one day, all too soon, it will be a memory. And she’ll seem all that much older then.

Why must they grow so quickly?!