Life with speech delays

Today DH and I met with a SLP (Speech Language Pathologist) to learn some techniques to help us work with our youngest two children.

To give you a little background, our middle child had a noticeable speech delay at age 2. Everyone kept telling us that her older brother talked for her so we shrugged it off. When there was no more denying that there was a problem, we took a deep breath and called our state for early childhood intervention and she was assigned an SLP to work wih her for an hour each week until she turned age 3.

After age 3, she began getting speech therapy through our local school system. We've been very fortunate to have great professionals to work with through all of our language and communication problems. Imagine my excitment (and tears of joy!) when she finally said "I love you Mommy" after about a year and a half of therapy!

This past summer, we had her evaluated by a private speech therapist who diagnosed her with Childhood Apraxia of Speech at age 4. To put it in the simplest way possible, she has a clear understanding of what is said to her. She has a clear understanding of what she wants to say to us, but her brain and muscles don't work together to get the words out correctly. Imagine wanting to talk and not being able to. I can't even imagine her frustration and it really put the temper tantrums and other behavior problems into perspective.

Fast forward a few months and we've had our youngest evaluated and he now gets speech therapy weekly for a speech delay. He has not been diagnosed yet, but seems to show some of the same speech patterns his sister shows. Only time will tell if his speech will develop normally or if he has a disorder like his sister.

With the struggles both our younger children are facing, we decided we needed professional help as well. As I mentioned, we met with an SLP today to learn "cues" to help our kids with their speech. Little did we know that we would discover entirely new languages! It was a little overwhelming when reality hit. We are facing a huge learning curve. Fortunately, our SLP is fabulous and pointed out that we can take this in small steps. She made us feel much better by explaining that anything we do with these tools is better than doing nothing, so it's ok to take them one step at a time.

So, my husband and I are going to learn to "speak" using verbal cues, tactile cues and sign language. I joked that some couples get to have a romantic night out, but we get the joy of staying in to practice our tactile cues *wink, wink*.

Nobody said parenting was going to be easy...