Speechless

Last week I threw myself a parental pity party.  It was epic.  I really hesitated over whether or not I was going to share it on the blog, until I realized that I really should reveal some of the harder paths we take in parenting and not just the adorable photos of happy moments that clog everyone's newsfeeds.

We went to our meeting with our special needs resource consultant about Jack and his speech therapy goals now that he is three years old.  The good news is that he has reached most of the milestones in terms of his communication checklist: he uses longer sentences (at least 5-8 words long), he is able to answer questions and tell short stories that (most) people can understand.

I love this picture because it has both Molly and Jack's face in it as if they are one.

The bad news was the behaviour he's been demonstrating over the past several weeks has been impacting a lot of his day to day interaction with other kids.  We discussed his regression in terms of toilet training, his obsession with "plugs" (caps and lids) and his attention span (or lack thereof) when he's obsessing over specific toys or ideas and the way that it's causing other children to disconnect with him, even though it's very clear that he seeks out interaction with his peers.  Staff at the daycare seemed just as frustrated as we were at this recent backslide.  In retrospect Chris and I think that they were bracing themselves for the worst - us denying that anything was wrong.   We explained how we were experiencing the same thing and we were on board with taking the steps to ensure that he is better equipped to build and maintain friendships with other kids in his class.  He was throwing a lot of tantrums and the other kids were starting to take notice.

It was a very productive meeting where we worked out a game plan that included a session with a child psychologist (to determine whether or not Jack has any anxiety or obsessive tendencies to flag or whether it's just a part of his personality) and a request for trained support staff to help the team at the daycare keep Jack's learning on track with the other children.  Chris and I can both be pretty odd ducks and Chris regularly admits to having issues as a child in school relating to other kids.  The difference being he wasn't age three dealing with this.  He was older, had better language skills and coping mechanisms in place by the time he had to have regular interaction with anyone besides his older sister - he still struggled with kindergarten and didn't like it very much.  That being said, Chris's finicky nature serves him well as an adult who analyses business opportunities and has an affinity towards Excel spreadsheets and statistical analysis.  Chris also admits that he really didn't like or want to play with other kids as a child "because they played wrong".  Despite the productivity and the fact that we are doing something to help him, all I wanted to do was to curl up into a ball and cry.  Jack may have inherited some of his father's quirks, but Jack wants to play with the other kids and the thought of him being rejected, because he's weird, was breaking my heart.

Prior to the meeting, I had assumed that the difficult stage we were going through with Jack was a normal transgression like the ones we had experienced in the past, often right before he reaches another major milestone.  It was just nothing had evolved out of this transgression.  His constant need to hold and label small objects (plugs) and  freak out whenever anyone corrected him just became something he did, so we had stopped correcting him because we thought it would just pass on its own.  Only it hasn't yet and it's time to intervene.

Both Chris and my mother take a very active problem solvers approach to any problem, while I prefer to wallow and lick my wounds for a while, whereas they both focused on what we could do to start helping Jack right away (more on that later).  I wanted to reach out to some friends but was embarrassed about the struggle and don't want Molly and Jack compared to each other or someone elses children (whether it's intentional or not).

The next morning my mother sent me an email that helped me turn it around and focus on helping Jack rather than feeling sorry for myself.  She reminded me that Jack was around the same age I was when I was expelled from nursery school for being an absolute terror.  I wiped my eyes, laughed about it for the first time in a long time and we began our plan on how to help Jack.  More on how that's working out tomorrow.

To read about Jack's initial speech therapy assessment last summer click here

Lost for Words

I have been worried about Jack and his speech, or lack thereof, for a while now.  When he turned two he wasn't meeting the speech and communication checklists set forward on what he should be able to do at age two.  To see what a child should be able to do communication wise by age two via Toronto Preschool and Language Services click here.  Specifically, he didn't have 100-150 words, the ability to use two pronouns, and he could only name and point to two body parts.  I was concerned especially with the direct, unfortunate comparison between Molly who has many, many words.

This was something that was flagged as a concern by myself, our sitter A. as well as one of our ECE workers. Chris on the other hand was less worried, but supportive of anything we could do to help Jack communicate and put my mind at ease.  At the two year doctor's appointment I voiced my concerns to our nurse practitioner and she provided a referral to a healthy child assessment a few weeks later where Jack would be tested in a series of stations for hearing, vision, emotional well being and assessed by a speech therapist.  She thought that it was probably nothing, I've been previously told that most speech/language development issues resolve themselves by four anyway, but it was worth getting an assessment and get additional tips on how to help encourage speech.

A boy and a boat

In the three weeks between the doctor's appointment and the assessment Jack's speech seemed to sky rocket.  He learned 30-40 new words including: apple, boat, Molly, pooped, raspberries, raisins, bum, book, crayon, monkeys, shirt, pyjamas and the names of his favourite staff at daycare.  He started excelling at toilet training and started defining what was his, his sister's mom's or dad's...the beginning of "mine".*  I later learned from Chris's mum that both Chris and his sister didn't speak more than a few words until after their second birthdays and that she too had scheduled such an appointment (which she later cancelled) for Chris's sister who showed the same kind of warp speed improvement after the clock struck two.

Chris asked me if I was still going to go through with the assessment.  My answer an emphatic YES.  Some of the burst of verbage was an age ready anomaly, but a lot of it was due to implementing suggestions from our nurse practitioner and the help from our daycare staff.  His current primary ECE worker has been so vigilant about making him use his words and we are so thankful for her help.

We signed into the assessment centre shortly before 9AM.  For the next hour we visited multiple evaluation stations where Jack was tested, played and our interactions were observed.  We now know that there are no hearing problems so far with our Jack.**  Our interaction with the speech therapist was great.  She had a set of toys out on her table and Jack sat and played while we chatted about his number of words (at this point 60-80) and recent speech spurt. 

Basically Jack was assessed as a normal, quiet child who's a bit slower to speak.  He interacts well with adults and other children, makes eye contact, he tried to negotiate stealing the speech therapist's glasses and "shared" crayons with her.  When asked he was able to point and name five body parts (eyes, mouth, foot, belly and bum).  I was assured that his sudden surge of development is normal, for him.  Our attempts to separate Molly and Jack so they can have more one on one time with an adult to focus on making him speak are encouraged and should continue.  We could also get flash cards or use books to make him point out and name different pictures on a regular basis.

All said and done I was pleasantly surprised and encouraged that everything we are doing is working well and we can allow Jack to go at Jack's pace.  It was good to get an unbiased professional opinion from someone who could see Jack outside of the parallel between alpha twin Molly.  I now have the phone number and email of someone who's met and evaluated Jack should we hit a stall on progress for a number of weeks in a row or if things aren't going as they should when we hit the 30 month milestone checklist.  When I spoke to our daycare about our experience they were thrilled that we had arranged for an assessment and not waited until preschool, as many parents do, and will continue to make Jack's speech development a priority.

After an hour of being impeccably good for a two year old, Jack decided that he was done behaving.  On our way back to the car after the assessments he felt it was time to tear off his shoe and lay on the ground in an act of passive resistance to walking, directly in front of the sketchiest guy on the street.  Thank goodness he had the words to yell, "NO WALK" as I tried to drag him away.

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*Which I'm certain we will grow to regret.
**Note hearing problems in a toddler are completely different than listening problems.