Speech

Okay let me give you a little history about my son. He was born with a Ankyloglossia, commonly known as tongue tie, is a congenital oral anomaly which may decrease mobility of the tongue tip and is caused by an unusually short, thick lingual frenulum a membrane connecting the underside of the tongue to the floor of the mouth.

Connor's was pretty severe when he would stick his tongue out the tip would go in and only the sides would stick out kinda like a lizard tongue. He had it clipped in December 2006 when he was about two years old. He has been going to speech since my husband deployed the first time in 2007, so he was almost three when he started speech. At the time he could say "da" and that was about it. He could point to show me what he wanted. Before he got his tied tongue clipped it was a very stressful time for us. Connor and me would get into crying fits since I couldn't understand him and he couldn't verbally express what he wanted. He learned a few signs but we just never got to into it. I think we were both so frustrated that we were both just giving up. Connor also has a breaking point which we learned real early. After so many times of him having to repeat himself he just gives up. Now he has learned to just agree with us even if we didn't get when he was really trying to say. Which is really sad, it has to be so frustrating to him, trying to get someone especially your mom to understand what you are saying and no matter how many times you try to repeat and slow down what you are saying you just aren't being understood.

He has had at least 5 different speech therapist since he started going to speech. When he first started out he went through three since with our health insurance at the time we had to go through the school district to get speech and if the school district couldn't give him speech, we had to get a note from the school district stating they couldn't give it. After a year of being home, in South Carolina and doing speech there. I moved back up to Watertown, NY so that Connor could be enrolled into preschool since his daddy would be coming home a couple of months after school started. I enrolled him into school there and transferred his speech to that school district. In my opinion the speech therapist he had there was the best and they were also gonna try to get him more speech sessions.

But we ended up getting transferred to here in El Paso. I began the process to transfer his speech to the El Paso school district and they told me that unless a child has a serious condition like down syndrome or something along the lines of that, or showing they were regressing in their speech progress then they wouldn't receive speech during the summer months and that I couldn't transfer him into preschool here because he wasn't old enough. In New York the birthday cut off is as long as they are four years old by December, here in El paso they have to be four by like September 4th or close to that. His birthday is in October, so he ended up having to repeat preschool and they didn't even teach them half the things he was learning back in preschool in NY.

Well he started to go to speech here in El Paso at first it seemed like he was doing okay but we have noticed one month we will be one step father in speech and then he regresses and it is just a roller coaster with his speech. I just don't understand it. He is now in Kindergarten here in El Paso he didn't receive speech over the summer yet again. My father in law talks to Connor at least once a week and he told me this week that he can't understand Connor at all. When he was starting to understand Connor not to long ago, but he is noticing that Connor's speech is getting worst again. I also talked to my mother and she said she was able to understand a word here and there but she can't anymore. Which just upsets me. The first month of school I was giving a few updates about what they were doing in speech but now I don't get anything I have no clue whats going on. I have pretty much all his speech records.

When I had asked when they test children to find out were they are at in their speech the school had told me they don't do any testing till the second semester in second grade. Which I think that's a little late to be doing testing. Since in South Carolina and New York they test a child when they first start speech to see what their IQ is and to see where they are having the most trouble whether its expressive language like Connor or something else. Also to see what age they are talking at, so they know where the child is at in their development. Which Connor first tested at 34 months old (2 years and 10 months). His receptive Communication was at a age of 23- 24 months. His expressive Communication was at 12 months.Communication total was at 15 months, his Personal-social was at 22 months, and his Cognitive was at 27 months. AS you can see he was way behind for his age.

When Connor was 3 years, 11 months old we moved back up to Watertown, NY area. Once he was transferred into the new school district, he was tested again. He was 4 years old when he was tested they waited till his after his birthday since it was so close and they wanted to get a better test score for his age. They used the Wechsler Preschool- Primary scale of intelligence to test him. He scored 96 on a full Scale IQ (mean=100, SD=15), verbal Scale IQ was 86, and Performance Scale IQ was 102. I wont go into the subtest that went with this test. They also did two more test at the time and with all of them his expressive language was where he had the most trouble which brought down his average test score on all the test.

So here I am our second year of living in El Paso, Tx no clue as to where my son is in speech. I have no idea what age level he is talking at, but I do know that he doesn't talk as good as the four year old across the street. I also have learned I don't like him going through the school for speech because I don't get to talk with the speech therapist after each visit to find out how he is doing like I used to be able to do. I made a appointment with his doctor to talk about getting a referral to see about getting more speech if tricare will pay for it. Also I found out what forms I needed to fill out to sign him up as a exceptional family member, since he is considered to have a disability because of his speech. I really didn't want to label him as a child with a disability but if it is the only way to get his speech to a level where it should be at. Then I will do it. Right now I just feel like I am not as involved as I used to be since we moved here and I don't get to see the speech therapist but when they do the review meetings. Which I am also gonna have to have his speech therapist at school sign the papers so I can register him as a exceptional family member.

I just want my son to be able to talk and have everyone understand him without him having to repeat him self so many times to the point he just gives up.