Speech

Little Miss Annie and little Miss Maddie are in speech therapy starting next week.  After two meetings with the elementary speech therapist, we are scheduled and ready to go.  We went in last week for testing, which took an hour and a half for the two of them.  They were troopers, and even though they lost much of their interest an hour in, they got through it.  Today was the meeting with the official IEPs (Individual Education Plan) written up and reviewed.  This is a SpEd program, and since it's through the school district, it's free.  This is a ton better than working with the doctor's office, and having them set something up 40 minutes away and having to pay two co-pays.  Not to mention it was going to be 2 months before they could be evaluated.  So I started working with the school district, and things have gone well.

The official review of the IEP revealed that Annie and Maddie tested very high in their language skills (108 and 107 out of 115).  As in, they stopped testing after age 5.5 (meaning all the things a child 5 and 1/2 should know).  She thought they could probably go higher, but as they aren't even 4 1/2 yet, their language acquisition is just fine.

Their sounds are just barely below what they should be for their age.  If it had been "regular" children, then they probably would have told us to wait 3 months and see if it improves.  But as their language skills are above and beyond, then their articulation really should be better.  The plan is to move from 50% understood to 80% in the next 3 years (that's how long an IEP is good), but the speech therapist figures they should be just fine by kindergarten.