Evaluations

EEEEK! I am leaving my office in about 10 minutes. I'm picking up Jesse and headed home to meet with a Speech/Language Pathologist and a Developmental Therapist. I am both nervous and excited. I have a lot of questions. Mostly about eating and drinking. I have a lot of curiosity. Prior to his palate surgery, he was 30% behind with his speech. I am very interested to find out where he ranks now. I will update later or tomorrow on how it goes and what answers we get.

I figured I'd just do the post evaluation update on the same entry since the pre-eval entry was so short.

We made it home right on time. Both the ladies were awesome. They played some games with Jesse and observed him. The DT, Natalie, said that he's just about where he should be developmentally. She wants us to work on identifying objects. I can do that. She doesn't see a need to do any therapy with him. Woo Hoo!

The SLP, Erin, did her thing. Jesse was chatty as usual, so she could see exactly where he was at with Speech. She told us that he's currently at the level of a 10 month old. She said his delay is typical of a child who's had palate surgery. She expects he will catch up in the next few months so she will come back for another evaluation in late July or early August. If he's caught up, no Speech Therapy! She was pretty confident he will be caught up by then. How I understand it is that when an infant has surgery, time basically stands still in their development, so all this makes a lot of sense. Erin also observed Jesse's eating, which he's also behind on. He's probably also just a hair behind with his feeding as well. He's not a big fan of table food (non-pureed food) so she gave me some tips to help introduce foods with more texture. She confirmed that he needs to learn how to suck. She thinks the new sippy cups I got for him would help and she said she would order him a honey bear to help him learn to suck through a straw. So all is well, no major concerns. Whew! Glad to have that weight off my shoulders, even though this just confirmed everything I thought anyway. It's just nice hearing it from professionals.