Hi hi

A long time ago I signed up for a daily Brainteaser text message to be sent to my cell phone. It was free and the little blurb on Verizon's site said something about challenging your mind. I like brainteasers so I thought they would be fun. Unfortunately, they're just silly things like "if the world is spinning so quickly, why don't we all get dizzy?" or "Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?" or "I may be inconsistent, but not all the time." Ugh. Today's was "Why do we say "bye bye" but not "hi hi"? Silly, but very fitting for this particular morning, because we had Logan's ChildFind evaluation today.

A team of four people evaluated everything you could possibly want to know about Logan and more in about two hours! They asked me a bunch of questions, watched how he played with toys, how he moved around the room and how he interacted with the evaluators. Not surprisingly (since this is the reason we went), they recommended that he have speech therapy. He's just not mimicking us the way he should be and isn't making very many consonant sounds. The good news is that he is trying to talk and seems to understand a lot of what we say to him, but just isn't forming the sounds properly. He "talks" at the right times - like when he needs help, after you ask him a question, etc. - but it's just not understandable. So, they're going to set up a meeting for us with a speech therapist and we'll also see an audiologist to be sure his ears are ok after his two recent ear infections.

What was surprising about the whole thing is that his other skills are not only on par with other 18 month olds but advanced in several areas. For example, he's already holding a marker correctly (not using his whole hand but has it positioned correctly between thumb and first two fingers), can put together puzzles really well (not by trial and error as most kids this age do - he put the right shapes in the right spots on his first attempt) and excels at pretend play (while we were there he fed a baby doll in a high chair and then washed the dishes in the play sink). Emotionally he is right on track - for example he laughs at things that are funny and is really attached to me but feels safe enough to go across the room with one of the evaluators and just look at me occasionally to be sure everything was ok. They were also impressed with his persistance - he wasn't able to turn a knob on one of the toys at first but kept trying until he figured it out.

So, all in all, it was a positive experience for us both. I'm sure no one ever actually wants their child to be in speech therapy but I'm glad we're taking steps now to make sure he's on track and not waiting for him to get frustrated with not getting his point across. :)