Whew...That's a Relief

One of the things that I've felt a little guilty about for the past year-and-a-half is that I did not get Caleb's speech evaluated around the time that he turned two. Although his receptive language was excellent, at 18-months he only had 12-25 words (depending on whether or not you count animal sounds). His language continued to lag behind until he was about 2 1/2, when he seemed to catch up, but it was hard for me to tell for sure. One reason is that he was our only child and it was hard for me to evaluate with nothing to compare to, and the other reason is that he is just not a talkative kid. Even now, he is not a talkative kid. He talks when he has a story he wants to tell or he thinks something is funny or he wants to do something, but he isn't a chatterbox like many 3-year-olds.

Anyway, a couple of people in our lives expressed concern over his speech delay, but because Ethan was born right when Caleb turned two and then we moved to Alabama two months later, I never got around to having him evaluated. Then we got here and it took so many months just to figure out how the health insurance and the school systems worked. But when Ethan's verbal skills began exploding, I realized how limited Caleb's had been, and I started to worry that I'd missed the speech therapy boat. So I finally jumped through all the hoops and had him evaluated by a speech therapist. The session was yesterday afternoon and it lasted for about 45 minutes. When it was over, I was very relieved to be told that the speech therapist had absolutely no concerns. She said that he is correctly articulating all of the 3-year-old sounds and almost all of the 4-year-old sounds, and doing very well with his later-developing blends, as well.

So he does not qualify for speech therapy services, for which I am very grateful. I'm glad I don't have to take him to weekly appointments, but I'm even more glad that my chaos-induced procrastination did not cost him anything developmentally. I think that he talked late for some of the same reasons that he talks less than other kids now: he's just more of an observer and a thinker, and he was not motivated to verbalize as early as other kids, much like some kids aren't motivated to move until they're over a year old. (By the way, I hope I get one of those later-moving kids next time...I'm tired of babyproofing for 6-month-old crawlers!)