JOSH-9-10

So, Josh has been referred to a speech therapist because he just isn't really talking. Well, I guess he's talking plenty, it's just not intelligable speech, even to me, the one who is with him pretty much 24/7. It's not that his lights aren't on upstairs, I mean, he can count into the teens, he sings songs all the time (I can recognize them by the melody) and tries to write his name (six squiggles with a line underneath---shuaaa is what he calls himself). He actually is learning about a word a day now but he keeps forgetting them. Anyway, during his 'diagnostic' visit, the speech specialist determined that he had a moderate expressive delay and a severe receptive delay. That pretty much means he talks at the lower end of the spectrum for boys his age, but he understands almost nothing of other people's speech. That last part has been rough. The speech lady has referred us to a specialty clinic for early child development for a full set of tests and an autism screening. I don't think he's autistic. He is very social--always has been. We'll see what they say.
In the meantime, I've been trying to narrate my day outloud--everything I do. Also I've been trying to repeat words over and over again. Sometimes he gets the word right away, and sometimes he doesn't say anything but then days later it will come out sort of out of the blue. I guess every kid is different. Yesterday we had a bad thunderstorm here (again) and he kept pointing to the window and saying 'fire.' I'm not sure if I ever taught him that word--you know, repeating it over and over--so, that was encouraging to hear. I reminded him in was called thunder and he immediatly repeated "sunder." Yay! We may just have a delay here folks and hopefully that's all.
We also have been trying to work on letters and numbers--first identifying them and also writing some of them. He knew for a while how his name was spelled. He couldn't write it (like I said, six squiggles), but he could say it. Well, recently J-O-S-H-U-A has turned into J-O-S-H-9-10. Chris figures it's because 'H' kind of sounds like the number '8' and so he has to finish off his name by counting to ten. I'm going to have to make a real effort to write all this stuff down so I can tell his first girlfriend. Speaking of sharing stuff with future girlfriends, I had to post a few more "pick and choose your battles" pictures--the likes of which go with the bandaid picture in my last post.