The Second Opinion

Today, a SLP came to do a second opinion eval. on D. She was pleased with his progress, and thinks we are on the right track with all that we are doing, so we should continue. She doesn't have time to fit him into her schedule right now, but things could change. Thus, we will continue with what we are doing.

She also gave us some exercises to strengthen D's oral-motor muscles that entail licking chocolate off of straws! Lucky kid! No more thumb sucking or sippy cups--don't know how we'll break him of the thumb sucking! Any suggestions? I've seen "devices" in magazines, but they look so freaky!

Anyways, we're happy that we are on the right track, and we look forward to hearing from the schools to see if they will add a day of services for D.

Being sick is no fun!

We had to miss our "second opinion" this week because D was sick with a virus. He seems to be better now, and back to his old self! We've taken a break from speech and have been working on potty training this weekend. So far, his record is 4 wins, 4 losses. So proud of my buddy!!!

The Half-Way Point of Summer

Here we are-about halfway through the summer and D is doing extremely well with his speech therapies. He has had speech therapy 2-4 days per week since March. It is finally starting to make a difference. We will be leaving his current Speech Therapist, Kendra (who has been instrumental in helping D begin to increase his vocabulary and in putting two words together) and will be beginning with another SLP next week. Kendra was covering for a maternity leave. She was wonderful!!!!! Thank you Kendra!

We are having a "second opinion evaluation" on Friday with Mary (a private SLP who works in W. Bridgewater Schools) who will let us know if we are on the right track with Morton Hospital therapy. Best part is she comes right to our house! We'll see how that goes, too.

Last week, we got the diagnosis that we thought we would: Severe Apraxia. Good news, though. The Neurologist feels that D's issues are pretty limited to oral-motor, and are not global motor planning issues. She also thought that he had an excellent prognosis because of his "intelligence and young age!" We just contacted the school to see if they could add one additional day onto his IEP of S-L services since the Neurologist would like to see him having intensive speech and language therapy. We think 2 days per week is hardly intensive. We will continue private therapy if they aren't willing to help out. It's very interesting to be on the other side of the table at an IEP meeting. We'll see what happens....

July 2009

This blog will keep everyone (who is interested!) in the loop regarding D's progress learning to talk. Suggestions, comments, etc. are more than welcome!