Monday, February 9, 2009

Evaluation

Today was Audra's full evaluation to see if she qualified for speech therapy or any other services because of her speech. I have to preface this by saying that last week our case worker came to our house and she said, "About 75% of kids have some sort of speech delay or speech problems." 75%??? That seems awfully high- maybe it's not the kids, maybe it's the standard! Maybe we are expecting too much from our kids too soon and relying on this standard that is simply to high if 75% of kids can't reach it! I just thought that was quite interesting.

So, I took her in this morning for her full evaluation and she easily passed the cute test- they all kept saying what a sweet and wonderful girl she is- of course, we already knew that! She was advanced on her fine and gross motor skills- not a surprise, she has always been advanced on those. She does have a speech delay (like 75% of kids), which puts her on the "mild" side of the spectrum so she does not have enough of a delay for her to receive services at this time. She gave us some tips on how to get her talking better. First: get rid of her pacifier. Ughh...we knew the day was coming, but now I fear it is time. We will begin that process today- and I am not looking forward to the tantrums that will occur during her nap and night time! Oh, well- she can't rely on it forever. Then, she gave us some "drills" to do at home- mostly using simpler phrases and emphasizing verbs since Audra isn't saying any verbs yet. If she isn't using 70+ words by her Birthday, then we need to take her back in, but the speech therapist was quite pleased with how well Audra is repeating words we say (a skill she recently has begun to get good at), so she is very optimistic that with getting rid of the pacifier and working on imitation she will do great. I wasn't surprised by anything they discovered- but it is comforting to hear nevertheless.

In regards to her pacifier (which I know some people are adamaently opposed to, but that's because they didn't have a daughter like Audra), I have to say that Audra came out sucking and wanted nothing but something to suck on for about the first 4 months of life. We were determined not to give her a pacifier until she was at least 3 weeks old because we were told it would interrupt her nursing abilities, but honest to goodness, that first week of life she literally sucked all of our fingers raw! Ask my parents- all she wanted to do was SUCK (which did make nursing much easier)! So, we finally relented and gave her the pacifier after a week to save our poor fingers! And now, it is a good soother, but I guess she will have to come up with something else to soothe her to sleep. We will keep you posted on how that goes!

Bye, Bye Beloved Binky!

13 comments:

  1. let us know how the pacifier removal goes. we're dreading the day we have to take it away from logan. good luck!

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  2. I'm glad to hear things went all right and I have to agree with you, 75% are speech delayed?!? If the majority of kids are speech delayed it definitely sounds like they have way too high of standards.

    I hope things continue to go well with Audra. It sounds like she is improving.

    As for the pacifier, Tyler wouldn't ever take to one but I just recently stopped giving him a bottle in the morning and before bed and oh boy! Was that hard or what! He was chewing through the nipples so I didn't have a choice but he sure put up a fight!

    All I could keep thinking was if I gave in then I would have to start all over again and the previous days were pointless. So, be strong! And good luck!

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  3. I don't think you should apologize for pacifier usage. It keeps parents sane for at least that first year. I, however, am a chicken and will not be giving it up with Nathan until I can "reason" with him about it or tell him the pacifier fairy took it away or something like that. That or we get news like you got. Let me know how you do it and how it goes.

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  4. Hey we are looking at coming out to see everyone in March and I have a few questions to ask you so could you email me halliewilkins@gmail.com? and good luck with everything I used to watch a kid that wouldn't talk for a long time he had a sister that was just 16 months younger than him and she talked first and would interpert for him basically. They started to teach him sign language and things really picked up for him with the in talking department!

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  5. I'm glad that things went well with the eval. Aside from that crazy statistic, that's great you were able to get her evaluated so early through the school district. I worked with a lot of kids with speech delays, but I never knew school districts would evaluate so young. That's great! Good luck with the pacifier. Spencer would never really take one.

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  6. I don't want to be the big naysayer here, but it looks like I am going to do it anyway. I don't think the standard should be changed simply because a lot of kids don't meet it. That's kind of like saying that if 75% of kids are unable to achieve consistent A grades on their report cards, then we should make it easier to get an A. No, we should strive as parents to help our kids do better and achieve the standard. Which is what the people told you how to do when they evaluated Audra. You know, specific things to work on. If all they did was relax the standard, then why bother even doing the evaluation?

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  7. Be grateful for the binky. Daniel was sucking his hand in the womb and now at 3 1/2 he is still sucking his thumb. At least you can take the pacifier away and just suffer for a few days. The thumb is a whole other story.

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  8. Adam - I completely respectfully disagree. Learning to talk is not like getting straight As at all. Learning to walk is not like getting straight As either. Babies/toddlers develop at their own pace a lot of times. A great parent can do everything, as you are suggesting, and the kid still calls milk "maymay" (in my kid's case), even though for the last 6 months at least I refer to it simply as MILK. We as parents end up getting so frazzled when our kid doesn't meet some kind of arbitrary developmental standard that we drive ourselves and the kids (and probably our pediatricians too) nuts trying to get there. I had a cousin who at 4 was a little behind in writing letters. My aunt and uncle tried so hard to get him to write letters that everytime he would see a letter he would totally freak out, melt-down, have a tantrum. When they finally chilled a bit and gave him some space he figured it out. Now he is a 15 yr old genius.
    I believe that pacifier over-usage can definitely lead to speech-delay, since the kid is always sucking and not even trying to say words. I can also buy that over-complex use of language to a toddler (probably I am guilty of this one) can confuse them into silence too. But I really don't think that Audra is a late talker because Christina's not doing enough. We both know Christina is probably doing everything she's supposed to.

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  9. Working at the pediatric dental office I have had my fair share of binky experiences!! If Audra is a visual little girl I know of some clever little tricks to get the pacifier out of the house! I know people who have tied the pacifiers to balloon and let them go! Or people have put the pacifiers in a basket and placed them somewhere and while they were napping the "Binky Fairy" would come and take them and leave a little gift!! Just some ideas!! I know it is not an easy task! Best of luck with that!

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  10. We went through the pacifier removal experience with Jacob when he was 22 months and his speech therapist said we had to get rid of it and now. He always had at least two pacifiers in his hands and one in his mouth, sometimes two! We cut the end of the nipple off (so there was still some plastic on there) of all the pacifiers and let him have them still. He couldn't suck on them but he still loved holding them. It took him five days to lose interest and we really didn't have any huge meltdowns because he was still able to hold them and have them. With Shanelle, we just let her have it in her crib for naptime and bedtime and she has to spit it out everytime she comes out of her room. That has helped but I am dreading the day that we have to take it away entirely! Good luck! You'll figure it out.

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  11. Who knew this would turn into such a hot topic:) I think we are going to try the cutting the end of it off. Right now she ONLY gets it when she is in her crib, which she doesn't like because she sees it when we change her diaper and wants it, but we just say, "you're a big girl, and big girls only need them when they sleep." I think next week we will cut the tip off- although, the balloon idea sounds really neat too! I don't know that she will grasp the concept that it is going bye-bye forever, though. We had wanted to wait until we could use a reasoning technique like that, but I don't know if it would work at her young age- but it is a great idea!

    As far as the standards go, I wish I knew who set the standard and what it was based on. Is it like the growth charts that are based on 1950's formula fed babies and therefore (in my mind) not at all accurate for a 2008 breastfed baby, or is there real scientific evidence that goes into it? It would just be interesting to know. I'm not overly worried about her speech delay, and it was really nice to get some tips on helping her progress, even if it means losing the binky!

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  12. Chris - do some research before cutting the ends off. I've read there is some danger in ragged edges, etc. So just make sure you know what you're doing first.

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  13. Danielle - I never said (or even intimated) that I thought Christina wasn't doing enough to help Audra develop more speech skills. Much the opposite. Christina mentioned (and I referred to) specific things that the case worker told Christina to do in order to help Audra's speech skills progress. These techniques are things that she may not have been told if Audra had not been tested against a high standard.

    You don't have to agree with the A grade analogy that I used. You can use any analogy you like. If a young woman is not finding any guys to date that meet her standards, that doesn't mean she should lower her standards. If an employer finds that 75% of job applicants do not meet their employment standards, that doesn't mean they should lower those standards. Etc.

    The main gist of what I was saying is that criticizing the standard is not the way to address the problem. The correct way to address the problem is what Christina is doing. Everyone develops at their own pace, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't help them develop in better or quicker ways.

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