wow -- words!

I've been meaning to do this post for awhile.

We've been worried about Wesley's speech for quite some time. When he was one year old, he was babbling but saying nothing definitive. Shane likes to say his first word was "Daddy," but Wesley called me "Daddy," so I don't really think he knew what it meant and it didn't count.

At his 15-month checkup, our pediatrician suggested that if we were concerned, we could get him evaluated by a local speech therapist, so we did. At 16 months, he tested in at a 9- to 12-month level. He didn't use any words, except for the arbitrary "Daddy" and the occasional "uh oh."

Until he was about 19 months old, we tried weekly speech therapy. Shane took Wesley in on a day when I was working (the only availability, I think), and it just wasn't that effective. Shane would forget to tell me things they talked about and I couldn't incorporate them into the other four days in the week. We stopped when our insurance deductible reset in January. We thought we'd try some things at home for awhile and look for improvement.

There was none.

About April, we noticed things weren't getting any better and we decided to set up speech therapy appointments again.

We started attending in May, but regularly in June. We went every week and spent an hour with Theresa. I was amazed at some of the things she did with Wesley. We had a lot of work to do.

Some of his issues:

• He only had a few sounds -- T and D mostly. He didn't make M, B, P -- major foundational sounds for toddlers. He never had his month closed.
• Because of this, he was still a major drooler.
• He didn't repeat anything we said... no mimicking.
  
• Of course there was no spontaneous communication; when he was upset he'd cry. There was no understanding what it was all about.
• He wasn't even signing. I knew he knew what some of the signs were, but we didn't get any response or signs from him.
• He wasn't pointing -- not at pictures, not at things in the distance, nada.
  
• He couldn't blow.
  

We worked on all of these things in the 3-4 months we met with Theresa. At first, we got some signs. It was a blessing from heaven! He could sign for "more" or "all done" or "help." It was great! Soon he could identify body parts by pointing. Very cool.

When we visited our in-laws in July, his only real word was "cookie." He knew what it was and he could say it and identify it. But that was it.

Theresa really had us working on sounds, massaging his face muscles and trying to get him to close those lips to get the "bi-labial" M, B, and P. Eventually we got some B sounds... he liked to say "bubble" a lot at first. But other words, like "bye" were still "die!" which was funny to everyone but me.

She'd do activities with him where if she knew he knew the word, she wouldn't give in until he said it. She wouldn't give him more cheerios until he signed "more." She wouldn't give him the ball to play with until he said "ball." I had to do that at home, too. It made for some frustrating meal times, but he'd communicate.

He eventually got some more words, but they were all wrong. He still didn't have an M sound, so milk was "nilk" and amen was "anen" and more.

Theresa said to not try to get him to change words he already had, but instead to work on new words. So, I stopped correcting "nilk" and instead tried to get him to say "monkey" or "moo" or similar. Theresa suggested trying "buh-bye!" because that often works.

It all worked. All of it. His language exploded. Since July -- just four months? -- he went from only saying "cookie" to now repeating everything we say, identifying items in books, talking to himself (understandable phrases and comments!), saying a few things spontaneously, and MORE. It's INCREDIBLE.

• I'll catch him in the backseat of the car reciting "Are You My Mother?"
• He speaks other anticipated phrases, like "ready...set...go!" and he can count to TEN -- and even higher sometimes! (I've heard him get to 14.)
  
• You saw the "holy cow" video, right?
• We can read a book and I can say, "point to the cat" and he will, and "what's a cat say?" and he can meow. Plus, I can point to something and say, "what's that?" and he'll say "cat!"
  
• When we're at Church and someone at the pulpit says "Holy Ghost," he'll say "Holy Ghost" ten times in the next two minutes. He repeats a lot.
  
• He strings all sorts of words together now. It's not just "water," it's "drink of water, please," and it's not just "help" it's "help with my cars, please."
• When he wakes up in the morning and he's cuddling with his stuffed airplane, he says "airplane! airplane fly! I like airplanes!" Seriously.
• Even his leaders at Church have commented to me how he is asking for more things and talking more, and they can understand him.
• He has stopped drooling.
• He can blow bubbles and whistles.
  
• He has even given a name to one of his stuffed animals... this big bear became "Bear Bear." That might seem silly or normal to you, but he doubled the word himself... so we went with it.
  
• He can say his own name! It was first, "Weh-wee" but it's more "Wes-ee" now.

It's night and day.

It's hard to say if, oh, this was all Theresa's doing, or if he was just not ready for speech and now he is. I'm sure it is a little bit of both. We really worked a lot at home. Sometimes when nothing was going on, I'd do some "speech therapy activities," like making noises while coloring (boop! bip! as we draw lines and dots on paper), or doing puzzles and making him ask for the pieces, or working on vocalizing letter sounds with our alphabet blocks. All sorts of stuff.


And it's helped.

He's now fearless when it comes to words. He'll say anything! Some of the hardest ones are hippopotamus or helicopter, but he tries them and says them and in general, he does very well! I watched another toddler recently -- a girl just a few months older than Wesley -- and I noticed his pronunciation was sharper than hers. His consonants at the end of words like "fast" and "dark" and even "church" are excellent. He can say almost all his sounds -- even hard ones like S and Z and R. Still no L -- that is the hardest. But it's leaps and bounds in improvement.

Just now, as I'm writing this, he is playing with blocks.... he's playing with Shane and saying:

• "more blocks?"
• "bigger and taller!"
• "Wesley do it!"
• "good boy!"
• "there ya go!"
• "good job!"
• "yay blocks!"

One interesting thing to mention is that even though this could seem a bit "micro-mangement" or "helicopter" to freak out when your 2 year old isn't talking, a lot of my friends have expressed to me that instead they are proud of me or impressed that I took the initiative, had him evaluated, went to therapy, and worked on this. Some moms just ignore it and hope it'll go away -- and it doesn't always. It's better to start early. We were also worried about autism, and while it looks like he's in the clear for many of those signals (not all! but most), we still wanted to be proactive about it.

In fact, because of the vaccine and autism link (however unfounded), our pediatrician said she didn't want anyone second-guessing themselves and we put off his MMR for more than a year. He finally got his first live vaccine this week, now that his language is so well established.

Anyway, maybe two months ago, our insurance benefit ran out so we said buh-bye to Theresa but she encouraged us to contact the local birth-to-three development center. In our county, they are called the Little Red Schoolhouse. It's a federal program (I think), and if you qualify you can get in-home speech therapy, occupational therapy (which we're also a smidge worried about), and more.

Little Red came and evaluated him in October, almost a year to the date from his last evaluation. At 28 months, he registered at a 17- to 21-month level. One of my friends pointed out that he essentially doubled his speech level in a year. He was still 28% delayed (they say), which means we qualify for services and we'll start seeing someone in our home, but he has grown so much.

They're concerned about him speaking to his peers, since he speaks to adults but tends to clam up around other kids. And it's true. They're concerned about "creative play" and how he wasn't able to "put the bear to sleep" and stuff like that. Plus, we're looking for more "spontaneous communication."

Up until a few weeks ago, I was still concerned at how limited this spontaneous communication was. If he woke up in the middle of the night delirious he wasn't telling us "tummy hurt" and I really wish he was. If we couldn't guess what it was, we didn't know. He was a good "parrot," but not really communicating.

But even now, every day, that is changing. Sometimes at meal times he'll ask for "applesauce," and I'm like, "oh, ok!" and he'll eat three bowls' full.

But the best thing happened the other night as we were trying to get him to bed. I gave him a drink of water. In between sips, our conversation went like this:

W: I wuv you.
Me: (my heart melted; I had never heard him say that; tears welled in my eyes) I love you, too, Wesley (and I gave him a kiss on his forehead).
W: Have a kiss?
Me: OK (I give him another kiss on the cheek).
W: Good job!

How precious!!! We had a conversation! My little boy's mind is working and he can finally vocalize it. I love it. I simply love it. This is so exciting.