Speech Therapy

Well, Laci completed her first week in speech therapy. She has a tendency to leave out consonants at the end of most of her words. Sometimes she leaves them out in the middle of words, too. Needless to say, she can be very difficult to understand, even for me, since I usually serve as her translator.

So, after speaking with a nursery leader about whether or not she is ADD - which still needs to be determined - I had her evaluated by the school district. They examined various developmental skills along with her hearing (passed hearing with flying colors...whew!). She is still too young to be evaluated for ADD, which is best diagnosed around 5-6 years of age. Since I have siblings with ADD, and she is incredibly active, I had always planned on getting her evaluated when she started kindergarten. I knew she was struggling with pronounciation, and naively thought she would have to wait until she started school to see a speech therapist.

Well, after her evaluation we found out that Laci could attend speech therapy (free of cost!) because she was in the "severe" category. Okay, so some of this was hard to hear. As a mom you never want to hear that there is something wrong with your child. But, as a mom, I also have the responsibility to help my kids be as successful as possible ... no one else is going to do it for them!

And, she is doing great! We practice a word worksheet 2-3x a day, and of course, I give her a reward after each time she goes through it so she'll stay excited about practicing. It's only been one week, but I am thrilled to see Laci's progress!! (Maybe now I don't have to worry about my baby being made fun of when she does enter kindergarten.)