Speech

A few months ago Grace saw members of the cranio-facial team at our children’s hospital for a regularly scheduled visit. As we cycled through each of the eight doctors on the team, they all had one message for us….

Speech.

The time is now for intervention for speech.  Grace has been seeing a speech therapist for a year.  But, she has been at almost a complete standstill with progress for about six months.

It was time to make a change.

So, we are starting with a new speech therapist in a couple weeks.

And…

Grace qualified for early intervention preschool for the fall where she will have much more intense speech services almost daily. 

I have to admit.  While reading the reports of all observations and the evaluations on her in the past couple months… I felt like I was punched in the gut.  

“1^st percentile for articulation”, “significant speech delays”, “high risk”…

Ack!

It’s not like I didn’t KNOW this.  If I didn’t know… I wouldn’t have had her in speech all these months, I wouldn’t have been pushing the early intervention team to evaluate her, I wouldn’t have fought with insurance to cover her services. 

But.  Reading it on paper...all that clinical mumbo jumbo... 

Don’t like.

I just want for her success.  I don’t want her to struggle. 

Hasn’t she faced enough struggle?!

I’m confident once we find the right speech therapist and she receives services more frequently she is going to make a lot of progress.  

And then I’ll miss her cute little words. 

Her latest…  “bating puit” (bathing suit). 

Sure, I want for everyone to be able to understand her. 

But, I also love when she says “bating puit”.