Aiden is a smart little boy. He shows good problem solving ability and is able to follow multi-step directions. He has an easy-going nature and is very loving to his baby brother. But Chrissy and I are worried because Aiden has a speaking problem. He used to babble a lot as a baby, but he never quite grew out of that; the sounds never formed into coherent words. We’ve come up with some ways to cope, but his language skills are barely past single syllables.
Children are supposed to learn a dozen words by eighteen months, and should be able to string two or more words together to make simple sentences by the age of two. Aiden started off with a couple of sounds by eighteen months, but words never followed. It’s hard when you take him someplace to play with other kids his own age, and he’s the only one in the room that isn’t speaking. We still strive to put him into social settings, but we tell people that he’s “shy”.
Chrissy started to be concerned when Aiden was only a year old. She picked up a book on the subject, “The Late Talker: What to Do If Your Child Isn’t Talking Yet“. The book deals mostly with Apraxia, a particular speech disorder, and what to do if you child has it. We don’t think that Aiden is Apraxic, but we did find out how to get help for him. At the very least, we took away from the book the need to have your child tested early to rule out bigger health problems.
We contacted “First Steps“, a child health group, and they came to do an evaluation on Aiden when he was seventeen months old. They claimed that Aiden had excelled on all counts except for speech, but he wasn’t far enough behind to warrant therapy. Aiden’s pediatrician then recommended that we test his hearing at the local hospital, and he passed those tests as well (we knew his hearing was fine, but did it just in case).
Aiden’s vocabulary didn’t progress farther than “mom”, “dad”, “eat”, “uh-oh”, “ball” and “bye”. First Steps came out again for a re-evaluation when he was twenty-three months old, and this time he qualified for speech therapy at home. He currently gets one hour of “play therapy” with a therapist per week. We think that this is helping, but the results are slow in coming. He now makes car noises and some animal sounds, which is good since mimicry is an important step towards speech.
Aiden has augmented his communication skills with sign language. He loves the “Baby Einstein” sign language videos, and he recently got “Baby Signing Time“. He has gotten pretty good at it, and can sign “car”, “ball”, “mom”, “dad”, “eat”, “cereal”, “cracker”, “cookie”, “candy”, “drink”, “milk”, “juice”, “water”, “baby”, “bath”, “bedtime”, “I love you”, “kiss”, “more”, “open”, “book”, “cat”, “dog”, “please”, and “thank you”. He has even started using multiple signs to put together ideas (”eat cracker”, “drink milk”, “more please”).
Although the sign language is a big help, we would prefer that he talk out loud. Chrissy has enrolled Aiden in speech therapy at St. Xavier University, where they teach speech therapists. This is a little pricey, but we’re serious about helping him speak properly. We’re hoping that Aiden will get better with more therapy and eventually catch up to other kids his age.
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