Nico is doing amazing in speech. He has made so much progress, and I am so proud of him. It is wonderful that he enjoys going to speech and every Monday when we turn into the parking lot, he says "peech," with excitement. He runs into the clinic and wants to begin immediately, even in his therapist is not quite ready!
7 months ago when Nico was first evaluated, he received a standard score of a 72(85-115 is the average range; SD=15; mean=100), which is in the bottom of the "below average" range for his expressive language. The little man's receptive language was 105, so no worries there. In a clinical setting (as opposed to in a school setting), "patients" get re-evaluated every 6 months. So Nico was re-evaluated about three weeks ago and scored a whopping 85! He is now at the bottom of the "average" range and making tons of progress. However, he is my child, and I expect him to be functioning at least at the mean, so we do have a ways to go.
Nico is now finally bursting with language, and while it may not be the most intelligible, it is there with using the correct number of syllabus the majority of the time and his correct vowel sound usage is increasing! With the evaluation, we actually changed to a different therapist. We are still at the same clinic, but the new SLP is actually the owner of the place and specializes in children under 3 years old. She is GREAT with Nico and has really built a rapport with him in such a short amount of time. He responds so well to her and works hard during therapy time.
In the few weeks he has been with the new SLP, two and three word phrases have come into bloom! Nico keeps surprising us with various phrases he says. Ed and I just look at each other saying, "he did just say...!" To name just a few of those now common day phrases: "what's this," "where'd it go," and "I want more dat." The best part is that Nico gets excited when we understand what he is saying. He tries so hard and it is finally starting to pay off! I am hoping that we will be able to continue to go to therapy up until the age of three because his sessions are not only great for working on language, but social and cognitive skills as well.
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