Dear Diary,
My little guy is 18 months old today. We are going to the pediatrician for his wellness check, and I’m nervous. He isn’t talking. He used to say mama and dada, but that has stopped. He babbles, but I’m pretty sure that he is supposed to have words. I’m not even sure if he knows his name. I’m nervous because I don’t want to hear the “A” word. I know that I’ll be able to handle whatever comes from this, including autism, but I’m still scared. I’m scared of the unknown and the potential challenges.
The pediatrician recommended we reach out to our state’s early intervention program to get our little guy evaluated for a speech delay. I’m hoping that is all they determine it is. I just feel like I failed as a mom because my child is behind, now I’m having to take him to early intervention. None of my friends with children this age are dealing with this, so I must have done something wrong. What did I do wrong?
We took our little guy to his early intervention evaluation today. We were so nervous going in because they scheduled the evaluation during his lunch/nap window. We thought he wasn’t going to want to participate and possibly throw some fits from being so tired. It all worked out though! I was pleasantly surprised that he immediately started playing with the evaluators. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all good news. It turns out that our little guy is behind in every speech category. They told us he’s supposed to have 100 words by this age. ONE HUNDRED! He has maybe three. I thought I was a failure before hearing any of this, but now I KNOW I am. What have I been doing wrong? How could I have stopped this? Did I miss something?
We have had four speech therapy sessions so far, and I honestly don’t think they are working. Our little guy doesn’t want anything to do with the therapist. Speech therapy at this age is tough because it is mostly about play, modeling sounds/words, and repetition, but our little guy just won’t interact. Our therapist thinks that he has “no expressive language” whatsoever, but I know that’s not right. What can I do though when he won’t say anything to her? He seems to be learning words more quickly now, but I think speech therapy has just been a coincidence rather than beneficial. I think I’m wasting everyone’s time with this speech therapy. I feel like our little guy is so frustrated with this lady being in our house and playing with his toys.
We had our fifth speech therapy session today. It was a HUGE success! Our little guy ran to the door to greet the therapist and immediately started playing with her. She picked up where she left off, modeling basic words like “up,” “open,” and “mama,” but she quickly changed course because he was talking up a storm. It was like he was showing off! Maybe speech therapy is a good thing after all because I’m learning new tricks to help build my little guy’s face muscles so that he can better make sounds/words. I still don’t understand what I did wrong leading up to this though. Or what did I miss? Why don’t I know anyone else who has gone through this? Why do I feel alone?
Until next time…
Love, Me
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