Moving Forward
Emma finally had her speech evaluation today (after having to postpone due to an ear infection last month). The speech pathologist was SUPER nice and Emma loved playing with all the toys and reading with her. She came right out of her shell once she realized that Ms. Ashley was not going to be poking and prodding her.
After an hour evaluation, the pathologist tallied up the REEL test scores and told us that Emma has a higher than average receptive process, meaning that she understands more than most kids her age, but she has a lower than average expressive process, meaning she can't communicate as well as kids her age. This translates into frustration for both her and us. The pathologist said that while she may not be showing her frustrations now, it will only get worse with how big of a difference her scores were between receptive and expressive. She does learn a couple new words a week, but for the most part, it's still very hard to understand her. She has trouble with her m and n sounds and replaces those sounds with b and p and sometimes even g (as in her "no" is "go"). She is, however, making some sounds that are a little beyond her age group, like ck. She does really good with her animal sounds and the pathologist felt like that's helping her pick up sounds that some kids her age can't yet. But, she also isn't stringing very many words together yet so the diagnosis was expressive language delay. This means that Emma will be going to speech therapy. I'm actually excited about this! The pathologist feels like she'll pick up on it very quickly and may only have to go to a few therapy sessions before she'll be caught up with other kids her age. There's a speech center right here in Gardendale so we'll be calling to set something up as soon as Emma has her adenoids removed.
So now we're getting ready for Emma's adenoidectomy on Thursday. Rory and I are getting nervous but it's just because it's our baby and she's never had surgery so we feel a little helpless. We know that it will help her and make her a lot more comfortable and we're happy about that. We're both just ready to get it over with! The pathologist also said that she was interested to see how Emma will react to being able to hear correct pronunciations once her adenoids are out. She said she thinks her speech will jump way up fairly quickly because she'll realize that she hasn't been hearing things right. We'll see :)
Just keep us in your prayers as this will likely be a long week for all three of us. I'll post an update on Friday to let everyone know how it goes.
God bless!
After an hour evaluation, the pathologist tallied up the REEL test scores and told us that Emma has a higher than average receptive process, meaning that she understands more than most kids her age, but she has a lower than average expressive process, meaning she can't communicate as well as kids her age. This translates into frustration for both her and us. The pathologist said that while she may not be showing her frustrations now, it will only get worse with how big of a difference her scores were between receptive and expressive. She does learn a couple new words a week, but for the most part, it's still very hard to understand her. She has trouble with her m and n sounds and replaces those sounds with b and p and sometimes even g (as in her "no" is "go"). She is, however, making some sounds that are a little beyond her age group, like ck. She does really good with her animal sounds and the pathologist felt like that's helping her pick up sounds that some kids her age can't yet. But, she also isn't stringing very many words together yet so the diagnosis was expressive language delay. This means that Emma will be going to speech therapy. I'm actually excited about this! The pathologist feels like she'll pick up on it very quickly and may only have to go to a few therapy sessions before she'll be caught up with other kids her age. There's a speech center right here in Gardendale so we'll be calling to set something up as soon as Emma has her adenoids removed.
So now we're getting ready for Emma's adenoidectomy on Thursday. Rory and I are getting nervous but it's just because it's our baby and she's never had surgery so we feel a little helpless. We know that it will help her and make her a lot more comfortable and we're happy about that. We're both just ready to get it over with! The pathologist also said that she was interested to see how Emma will react to being able to hear correct pronunciations once her adenoids are out. She said she thinks her speech will jump way up fairly quickly because she'll realize that she hasn't been hearing things right. We'll see :)
Just keep us in your prayers as this will likely be a long week for all three of us. I'll post an update on Friday to let everyone know how it goes.
God bless!
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