Speech update
Today Dan met with the speech team again (Casey the coordinator, Deanna the Developmental Specialist and Jessica the Speech Language Pathologist). I was stuck at work but he recorded the whole thing on his phone for me to listen to when I came home.
They went over the observations from the previous meeting, gave us a print out of their assessment and set up some goals to work on over the next three months. I will repeat their summary for you:
Dexter is a very socially engaging child, and seems to enjoy the attention of adults. His strengths include relationships to inanimate objects (how he plays with toys) and his ability to work through small frustrations to learn new skills. Although he is not showing a delay in language skills, his speech intelligibility is reduced due to articulation errors. Many of Dexter's words were difficult to understand. Dexter is also displaying a 25% delay in self help, primarily because he is not able to say his name when asked and says "meh" instead of an approximation of his name. Dexter transitioned easily between tasks, even though he wanted to take more time with some items. For example he really liked the puzzle and did it over and over but was able to put it back in the bag without a tantrum. Gross motor - he is in the 27-30 month range, a slight delay - mostly balance delays. Fine motor - 33-36 range, age appropriate. Dexter was able to build a three piece tunnel structure, showing again his ability to focus and complete tasks. Relationship to inanimate objects - he is in the 36-42 month range, Again Dexter easily masted several puzzles. Language - he is in the 30-33 month range. He understood prepositions such as under, on top and in and was able to follow several verbal directions. His word production consisted mostly of vowel sounds. Emotions - he is in the 30-36 month range showing a wide range of feelings.
Goals:
1) Use more consonants. Dexter mostly says the vowels in words and skips over the consonants either at the beginning or the end or both. Consonants a 33 month old should be able to say are: P, B, M,K, G, W, H, N, T, D No magic stuff here, just try and say the words for him and try to encourage him to repeat stuff.
2) Improve oral motor tone - fun things to do here include blowing bubbles, drinking a think drink through a straw, mirror play put yogurt on upper or lower lip and then try to lick it off while watching yourself in the mirror (both parents and Dexter get to play this), blow into a straw - they suggested putting a drop of watercolor paint on paper and then blowing on it to make it spread.
3) Continue to work the large muscles on the playgrounds, stairs, etc.
4) Try to get him to repeat the names of things. If he wont say the word your trying to work on, try and trick him by saying to an alligator "what a nice dog" and hope he responds "no, gator"
Next event is Monday when he gets his hearing tested. I am sure it will be something like this:
