After a visit to discuss this with our family doctor in February, 2006, Riley was placed on a waiting list for services with a speech/language pathologist (SLP). In June of that year, Riley began taking speech with an SLP at the hospital. It was pure hell. Between June and December 2006, we attended 8 sessions, where most of the time, Riley did everything that the SLP didn't want him to do. And you know what? I don't blame him one bit. Her office at the hospital also doubled as her therapy room. One side had a desk with binders and papers everywhere, and a computer that was oh so tempting to my curious little boy. The other side had a child size table and chairs, and a cupboard full of toys. Now, you tell me, what 2 year old wouldn't want to explore the unknown on the other side of the room. It was very hard to keep Riley focused and on task, never mind me. I just felt like there wasn't a connection between the SLP and Riley, and I eventually told her that it wasn't working. She then suggested a home based service that specialized in children with developmental delays, agreeing that Riley would probably have more success in his own environment. Duh. And of course there was a waiting list...We heard from the speech program in April 2007, and started receiving regular visits in June/07. Thing is, the poor kid went from January-June/07 receiving no speech/language services at all.
Needless to say, Riley's speech wasn't really coming along. But it sure didn't stop him from communicating with us! He had no problem using other methods to get his needs/wants/feeling across, and often used pointing and gesturing, and would take us by the hand to show us what he wanted. While we were seeing the SLP, she suggested teaching him simple sign, so we had started with "more", but he didn't seem to be picking it up. I think that in his mind, he had lots of words, to us, they just came across as sounds, but those sounds had meaning. For the most part, it seemed as though he was learning to talk like a 1-2 year old does, not like a 3 year old, who should have most of his sounds and words. Most of the words that Riley used that were actual "words", seemed to be missing either the beginning or the end sound.
I spent a lot of time taking language samples of what Riley was saying, and trying to figure out the meaning behind all the sounds. On February 26/07, I recorded the following:
*up
*whoa!
*cup (omitting the C)
*go
*out (omitting the T)
*hat (omitting the T)
*car (omitting the C)
*Bob (sounds like "obp")
*coat
*come
*hi!
*umm (wanting something)
*yum yum yum
*igum (???)
*ikeegum (???)
*smacks his lips or points into his mouth when he wants something to eat
If we didn't know the context of what Riley was talking about, it was extremely hard to understand. But you know, the little guy never once got frustrated b/c we didn't know what he was talking about. I think that it was more frustrating for my husband and I. Riley would sit there, obviously telling us a story about something, but we couldn't understand. We would make guesses to what we thought he was talking about, and sometimes we were right, and if we were wrong, Riley would try again, and again, and again. Sometimes we ended up saying "We just don't know, buddy...", and he would look so disappointed, and hang his head a bit, in defeat. It broke our hearts. We felt like failures, and often wondered what we did wrong, how we could do more, how we could get him back on track. Everyone told us not to worry, that he was probably just a "late talker".
It was around that time that I decided that if no one else was going to help my boy, and try to figure out why he wasn't talking, then I would have to do it myself. I spent lots of late nights, researching speech delays online, and one night, I came across something called "apraxia". The bells went off. This sounded exactly like my Riley.
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| Riley turns 2! |
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| Summer 2006 |
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| Fall 2006 |
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| Spring 2007 (3 years old) |
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| Captain Underpants Riley being silly |
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