As I was composing this post in my head, I realized how lucky I’ve been. I had a complication free pregnancy, the birth I wanted, and so far relatively few instances of illness. We go to the doctor for shots, and that’s it. I like it that way. His pediatrician brought up his lack of speech back at 12 months, but after a hearing test she was satisfied and didn’t say anything until his last appointment. Right before we left for Europe she recommended us to a speech therapy program and let us know it would be a good idea to get him tested.

Today, four very nice women came over (one program coordinator, one speech therapist, one developmental therapist (is that the right term?) and one woman doing some shadowing) and spent about 2 hours with us, playing with T1, listening to me interacting with him, and asking me an astounding number of questions. Questions about things I’ve never even considered!

After about an hour together the therapists felt ready to present their findings. The speech therapist said he’s doing great at some things, like linking together multiple consonants and vowels, but overall he’s very behind, testing at about 9-12 months (he is 18 months now). He still doesn’t use any words unprompted. The develpomental therapist placed him at somewhere just about 12 months for his cognitive abilities, worrying that he doesn’t respond to commands like “give me the cup” and doesn’t identify pictures (even things like shoes, a thing/word he loves, and that he will babble on about and fetch when we go say the words go bye-bye or ask him about his shoes). I’m sure there are other reasons that I’m forgetting because I don’t have a summary in front of me, but that was the general message. They want him to have two hours of therapy per week, one hour with a speech therapist and one hour working on his cognitive abilities. Therapy would happen at home, which is great now, but will feel absolutely essential in the winter when bundling him up and finding parking would be a nightmare.

I’m doing fine emotionally. I mean, I knew he wasn’t talking so they didn’t really give me any new information, you know? They came to my house to verify some things I suspected, and are willing to be the resource I need to fix a problem we have (lots of temper tantrums, most dealing with his inability to communicate his needs). Because I thought some of you would be curious, I made this little iphone video while he was in the bath today. This is typically a time when he is very vocal (I think he likes the acoustics) and this is a good example of what he sounds like when he is babbling a lot.

We do sign with him, and he is great at a sign for milk, and waving his hand to let you know he wants to go bye-bye, but so far I can’t get him to use “more” unprompted, or acknowledge the sign I made up for “num-nums” in an effort to get him to let me know if he wants to eat.

The evaluation itself was free, but the program will cost us something, we’re just not sure how much yet. Our tax return information puts us at $30/month directly to the program, which we can handle, but figuring out what the insurance company will bill us for (it’s UofC student health insurance, and after our hearing test they said over the phone that they do not reimburse for “developmental delays”). I’m going to have to work on figuring out what it’s going to cost because that will determine whether we decide to do the therapy. If we consider the cost to be exorbitant, we are considering putting this off until next year when we are back on the Company X insurance plan. If there are professional therapists that specialize in this area who would like to weigh in I’d love to hear how horrible this idea is. (Ha!)

You know what? I lied about feeling fine. I am wracked with mommy guilt. At the end of the meeting I told the women I was very happy with how the meeting went, but that I couldn’t shake the feeling that we are parents are to blame for this, and that maybe if we made some small and simple changes we could fix this on our own. They assured me that after spending some time in our home they didn’t think that was the case at all, and that we could try putting this off for three months and implementing some different training techniques, but I could tell the speech therapist in particular thought this was a bad idea. I just can’t stop thinking that if I just tried harder to never be on the computer when he is awake, or if I would follow him around and talk to him incessantly labeling things when we go to the park, or talk to him in a sing-song voice every moment during dinner that therapy wouldn’t be necessary. Then I think he’s just too far gone and I need to just accept I ruined him. Then I think about having the next one and I realize that it’s not going to be possible to do give T2 the attention I irrationally think T1 must have needed to avoid delays. Then I just feel guilty all over again.

In summary T1 is probably going to start therapy and I am feeling like I might need some therapy of my own to swim out of this sea of guilt I’m drowning myself in. :)

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