For the past few months, my son has been going to school.
It’s for speech. We decided to have him evaluated by our public school system because it is, well, free. We pay taxes and therefore are eligible for school services even if we do not use the school system.
His evaluation was thorough and covered everything from his motor skills to how he follows direction. Fortunately, all of those areas were just fine, but he has several speech issues.
For one, he can’t make any of his back-of-throat sounds like “g” or “c”. And he leaves off the “s” at the start of words (or “tart of words”). And he talks super, duper fast, so all his words run together. Iblamehisfast-talkingsistersforthis.
So every week, I bring him and his sisters to a classroom where D plays games with the teacher while we sit and watch. Well, actually, Belly and I sit and watch but Jilly plays games too. She loves participating and thankfully the teacher doesn’t seem to mind.
I waited a long time to get to this point. I truly believe that D would eventually outgrow his speech weaknesses and was willing to let him figure things out on his own. But, at 4 1/2, the frustration he was feeling over not being understood was obvious. So, we’re doing what we think is the right thing to do.
We’ll see if it works. I know he’ll appreciate it.
Follow
