Crazy Mom

The crazy speech therapist in me has really been paying close attention to Hunter's expressive language skills.  I'm sure people with other professions do the same thing when it comes to their area of expertise.

In the schools, the youngest children I see are 3.  I'm good at knowing what a typical 3 year old should be doing.  A 12 month old?  Not so much (I mean, I know, but I don't feel as good about listening to a 12 month old and telling someone, "Yep, following right along with the guidelines.").

Hunter tries to label things, but it mostly comes out as "duh" or "da".  Let me tell you, after a few weeks of this I started freaking out thinking, "Oh no, my son is Apraxic!"  I know, I know, just let me be all crazy!  He does use "buh", sometimes.  Banana is still coming out "duhnana" and ball is still "daw".  He sometimes says "buhbuh" for bubbles.  And he is approximating "hello".  So here I am, thinking, "Is this typical?!?!  Do I need to go get him a speech eval just to have someone either tell me that I am crazy or that he is a little behind?"

So what do I do?  Asked Ashley to copy me a protocol of the Rossetti (I would copy one from my work, but, again, we don't see children that young).  This scale starts at 0-3 months and goes all the way to 33-36 months and evaluates interaction-attachment, pragmatics, gesture, play, language comprehension, and language expression.

Hunter and I sat down and played and I was able to do the checklist.  Some things I knew he could or couldn't do but others I actually had to elicit.  I'm a little rusty on the scoring, but I remembered you do percentages.  I couldn't remember how you count a section that had items for, say, 9-12 months, none for 12-15, but then some for 15-18.  Hunter scored 100% at 9-12 months, but then there wasn't anything to score 12-15, and then he scored 67% on 15-18.  So I just considered the last 100% before the empty section was his "score".

This is the front cover of the form

And his Age Performance Profile

And his age score

I gave him the age scores based on the last 100% age range he achieved... I believe that is how it is done (I don't have the manual).  He has some of the skills at higher age levels, but not all of the skills.

So, this gave me a good idea of how Hunter is performing in all areas of language.  He didn't score below 9-12 months on anything, so since he is newly 12 months, I'm not too worried (okay, maybe I am).  I was very impressed with his play skills.

I have a few goals for him that we will be working on.  I would say over the past 2 months I have been bringing the items that I am labeling to my mouth so that he will watch my mouth (I do this in therapy, why have I not been doing this for my own child?). I need to set a certain time during our play that he actually has to make an attempt to label the object he wants instead of looking cute and gesturing for it saying, "dat!"  If I blog about it, I will do it (and make my child super mad, ha).

In case you were interested, some goals we will work on:
-Interaction-Attachment: Request assistance from an adult (he will gesture and vocalize, but he hasn't said, "help" yet).
-Pragmatics: At a good age level so no specific goals to work on.
-Gesture: At a good age level, but we will play with musical instruments more.
-Play: At a good age level.
-Language Comprehension: Identify 6 body parts or clothing items (he does nose, eyes, mouth, ears, and will point to his feet when you say shoe even if he doesn't have any on); identify objects by category.
-Language Expression: Produce 3 animal noises (does dog and lion.. we have been working on the farm animals and the monkey); express early developing modifiers (e.g., hot, big, little, etc.); asks to have needs met (again, he vocalizes and gestures, but I didn't count that)... and then there are some at the 15-18 month level that I will focus on.

I'm giving him until 18 months to improve with my "therapy".  If not, we will be getting a referral for a hearing eval and a speech eval.