So My Kid Needs Therapy Already

We always joke about having to pay for therapy for our kids later, but what happens when your toddler needs it? Last week Josh started speech therapy with a program run by the university. Being a premie, he always tested for delays in multiple areas but as he grew, most of the areas have caught up. However, his speech just hasn't developed on the same trend, even when accounting for his actual gestational age. So, through my pediatrician's office, a really nice grandmotherly lady came out and did some evaluations on Josh. Of course, one of the first things he did when I put him in his chair, was to totally zone out and stare off into space for about a minute. The lady was like, "Does he do that often?" Behavior like that is a classic sign of autism, and I've NEVER seen Josh do that, except when he sees something really interesting on the TV. Great Josh, what perfect timing you have to start doing stuff like that. Luckily he snapped out of it and spent the rest of the time doing his normal thing. That boy will do just about anything for a cheerio.

After these tests, they determined that Josh qualified for some early intervention for his speech. The good things about what he does is that he's alert and oriented to his surroundings, is affectionate and likes to be touched, looks for reassurance and to see if he has an audience, babbles and makes all sort of different noises and is very clever at problem solving. I was well aware of that last one, because we have yet to find some sort of device that can keep the boy away from the Xbox. Even tying knots around the door knobs only slows him down momentarily.

Their diagnostic is that he just has some sort of motor delay that is keeping his tongue from forming words. And he's just a bit stubborn in refusing to imitate words. I knew that last part already. Who has a toddler who isn't stubborn? Since he was also late in crawling and walking, they are pretty sure that he will be talking by the time he is two. In the meantime, a therapist comes to our house twice a month to monitor his progress and come up with new games and ideas for us to help improve his skills. In all honesty, it is more like therapy for teaching me. I love it, because its not like I've ever raised a kid before, nor have I ever taken child development classes. Our main goal for right now is to get him to imitate motor skills. For example, for us to raise our arms up and for him to mimic that. They think that if he can get started with imitating (and being heavily praised for) physical movement it will progress to spoken words.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I am seeing a future vision of myself being really annoyed by his constant imitation, or repeating things that he really shouldn't be saying. Perhaps I shouldn't be complaining about a toddler who doesn't talk...