Eli and I met with an Early Intervention Specialist today to talk about his speech delay. She gave him a brief evaluation. He scored one standard deviation below the mean in the area of communication. The cut-off for participating in this program (offered by the public schools) was 1.5 std dev below the mean. So, she confirmed that he has a speech delay, but it’s not bad enough to get help from her program right now.
She gave me some tips to help him talk. A lot of things she mentioned that she saw I was doing already – getting down on his level to talk to him, talking a lot, reading, identifying objects, etc. It was validating to have the specialist note that I was doing great things to help him. She suggested I change one thing, though. I currently talk to Eli in full sentences with proper (to the extent that I care) grammar. I will say to him “It’s time to go, Eli. Let’s put on your shoes”. He understands and obeys me (he’ll find his shoes and sit down for me to put them on). But even though he understands the full sentence, it’s too many words for him to repeat. She recommends I say “Go! Shoes!” instead. She acknowledged that this will feel like a step backwards since he understands the full sentence, but saying fewer word will help him focus on words to repeat.
She also recommended that we push him a little more to talk. For example, if it’s snack time I’ll ask him “cracker?”, wait 5-10 seconds hoping he repeats it back, I repeat “cracker?”, repeat the short wait, and then give him the cracker while saying “cracker”. Thankfully, she acknowledged that I’m not expected to do this all day long because it would be exhausting and frustrating. She recommended that I pick two times during the day to really focus on his speech, and then just relax and play the rest of the day.
The evaluation was a brief questionnaire. She said that if I wanted I could request the full evaluation. I don’t think that’s necessary, I think the questionnaire accurately represented Eli’s abilities. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Andy about this yet so there might be another evaluation. The specialist recommended that we work on the things she suggested and reevaluate in four months. I told her four months was too long and I’d be more comfortable with two months. She was fine with that and told me I could call her for another evaluation whenever I wanted. That (2 months) might be our plan of action. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Andy yet (he’s working but I wanted to blog about this as soon as possible so I didn’t forget the details). We still have the option of a speech therapist at Mayo if we’re not comfortable working on our own and waiting.
The questionnaire covered the other four areas of development. Eli got the maximum score possible in gross motor and fine motor skills and scored smack dab in the middle of normal for problem solving and personal/social.