Say What…

Erin was referred to a Speech Therapy assessment by our pediatrician at her 5 year check up.  She is smart as a whip but the doctor was worried about some of her pronunciations.  She has trouble saying “v”, “b”, “l”, “w”, and the “sh” and “th” sounds.  She knows words with these sounds but just can’t say them well.

The woman that did the assessment was goofy, goofy, goofy.  Tommy went with us and she stepped out of the room and he was making the hand gesture for crazy.  I had to laugh because I was thinking the same thing. She was good at her job, just Looney Tunes.

She had Erin sit at a flip chart and tell her what the pictures were.  They were testing her cognitive ability and her vocabulary and her speech.  She got a 114 out of 115 on her vocabulary and cognitive ability, but got a 62 on her pronunciation.  So, the recommendation is speech therapy once a week to get it corrected.

We did the testing at Texas Children’s in the medical center but they have a branch in The Woodlands.  We’ll do our therapy there and won’t have to go back to TCH hospital again for anything speech related.

She would probably have grown out of some of these, but not all of them.  We’re doing it now so it doesn’t impact her reading ability.  The doctor said her hearing loss is likely to blame for the poor pronunciation.  When you can’t hear, it’s difficult to pick up the subtle sounds of the English language.  We’ve gotten the hearing corrected so now it’s time to work on our speech.  Poor baby!