Speech Therapy

My grandmother asked me last week about a speech appointment I had mentioned in a previous post. That made me realize I never did a post on Adelaide and speech therapy.

Let’s start about a year ago…she looks so little!

Last summer, I noticed Adelaide's drooling kicking into high gear. I honestly think she has been a heavy drooler since maybe 4ish months. Obviously at that age, and her age last summer, that can all be blamed on teething. But it still seemed like a lot.

Most of the time I kept her in a bib, otherwise her shirt would be completely soaked in minutes.

I remember talking to the doctor about it at her 1 year check up. He wasn’t concerned and honestly I wasn’t (and am still not) too concerned. I don’t think she will drool like this forever. But early intervention is my thing. It is a big part of what I do, well I guess did until I started to stay home full time!

So around 15 months, I called ECI. They came out and did a speech evaluation. She qualified for services based on her expressive language and oral motor behavior.

She has been getting speech therapy, twice a month since March of this year. Her speech has come a long way. Originally she was testing about 3-4 months behind in her expressive language and now she is only about a month behind. Really at her age, there is a wide range of typical speech development, so she is doing just fine. She is not as big of a talker as Aedan was at the same age, but she is gaining more and more words each day. Her receptive language has always been good. When they first evaluated her, she was right on target and now she is about 3 or so months ahead. Which may explain why we are seeing some two year old style tantrums…I have a feeling two is going to be a rough year for her us.

The drooling. Sigh. Hasn’t slowed down. I don’t keep a bib on her anymore, because she doesn’t seem to care if her shirt is wet. Her speech therapist and I are pretty sure the drooling is related to some oral motor hypo-sensitivities so we are working on a few things. Obviously it is such a minor thing, but why not get some help with it while we can.

So in a nutshell, Adelaide has an awesome speech therapist that comes out twice a month (can I just say how much I love that ECI comes to our house vs. me having to drive somewhere). I think she likes all the 1:1 attention she gets and so far Aedan has been really good at entertaining himself during our sessions.

-Lauren-