Speech x2

Claire finished up speech with Ms. Linda back in August. This was her second year of speech and Ms. Linda had big shoes to fill.

We loved spending the year with her and hate to leave her, but we are switching back to speech services through the county where we live (instead of the neighboring county where we were enrolled in private preschool). Confusing much?

Anyway, Ms. Linda was great and Claire progressed a lot in her speech this year. So much so that we feared she would not qualify for free services if she was reevaluated. (She definitely still needs speech, I'm just not sure if its bad enough to qualify for free services.) Thankfully, she will not be reevaluated until 2013 and we will continue receiving free speech services through the school system another year (with a new therapist).

I titled this post "speech x2" because David has also recently qualified for speech services through the school system for articulation delay (just like Claire). I suspected that he would even though he is much more intelligible to me than Claire was at his same age. Maybe I'm just used to listening to it by now. And apparently, he is too.

Our history of speech problems certainly doesn't bode well for this little guy ...

Especially since his tongue is constantly sticking out of his mouth. (Claire and David both do something called "fronting" which has something to do with their tongue being positioned more in the front of their mouth which makes it difficult for them to make sounds in the back of their mouth ... SLP friends ... correct me if I am wrong.)

I really can get down sometimes about all of our speech woes, but I was constantly reminded this year (twice a week when Claire went in for therapy) that there are kids MUCH worse off than mine and I am very thankful that our problems are only with articulation and not any type of developmental problems.

And, I am very thankful that we do not have to bear the financial burden of paying for private therapy since we have qualified for services through the school system.

So here's to another year of speech ... times 2.