Mama Instincts

A couple weeks ago, I got an email with the report for the speech assessment Leon had back in March. It was with the local school district, and because their evaluation and treatments are both free, I felt like they’d be a good unbiased third party to assess him. 

According to the report, he’s in the 1st percentile for articulation and has a “severe speech impairment.” Among other things, their concerns include a frontal lisp and velar fronting. They estimated that he’s understood about 75% of the time by non-family members when context is understood, but he still should be progressing further with the way he uses his tongue.

I felt really validated that I kept asking doctors and teachers about his speech over the last couple years, but also a little sad that I didn’t trust my instincts more and get him in for an evaluation sooner. However, I guess what’s to say that if I brought him in sooner, the speech evaluation would have concluded the same thing, and then I would have had a false sense that everything was OK?

Because the school district wouldn’t be able to get him in for free therapy until August, I immediately called the private speech therapy clinic right next to our house, where many of the school’s speech pathologists work part-time. Leon’s first appointment is two weeks from today, and from then on he’ll have a standing appointment every Monday afternoon. And since the school’s assessment was so thorough (and it’s cheaper for us to go outside of insurance), they have more than enough info to jump right into therapy without an additional evaluation.

On another note, look at these school pictures!