Speech and Hearing Evaluation

Jude had a speech and hearing evaluation done today.

We did this because I mentioned to the Dr. at Jude's 18 month check-up that Jude has not really had any speech progression since about 1 year old. He was speaking sentences at a year, which is really ahead for that age, but he just has not progressed any since then. There is some family history of boys in my family struggling in school, so if there was issues, I wanted to get intervention started as soon as possible. The Dr. was also concerned at the lack of progression, hence, ordering the speech/hearing evaluation.

Jude is just getting over Croup (again!), so he is still really congested. I debated re-scheduling, but it took two months to get this appointment, and I really did not want to wait another two months.

He did really well for both of the tests. Much better behaved than I thought he would be.

Basically, Jude is right on the edge of needing intervention/therapy.

I never thought he had an issue hearing, but according to his test, he just might. His hearing was below normal in his left ear, and just barely in the normal range for his right ear. He is getting over Croup and really congested, so that could be the problem. They want to re-test him when he is well again.

According to the test that Children's did, Jude does not qualify for any speech intervention. However, the evaluator had some real concerns. Yes, Jude is within the "normal" range for his age, but he was at that stage over 6 months ago. There had just not been much progression since then. The lack of progression concerned her, but because of how the tests worked, she could not put Jude in therapy based on his scores (he had to have a certain score before she was allowed to refer to therapy) . She referred me to Help Me Grow, and said that they might have a different testing system and hoped that maybe he would qualify under their system. I have a call into them. The evaluator also wanted us to come back in about 6 months to re-test. I think she is concerned enough that he might have issues that she wants to stay on top of it and get him in intervention as soon as he qualifies.

So, more testing and more referrals, but at least everyone is being pro-active about it. If he is going to have problems/issues, I would rather them be caught now and intervention started now, than wait for him to start school and then suddenly try to play catch-up.