Speech, and what we've learned

A ton. Gabriel is now talking all the time. He wants to describe everything, and he wants confirmation from us that we understand him. He wants all of his toys to have conversations with him. When he first started talking, I could probably only understand 30% of what was coming out, and most people's percentage was much less. I know how frustrating this was to me, and apparently it was frustrating enough to him for him to get better. Which I'm thankful for, every day. I can now understand about 90% of his very long sentences.

Part of his problem was lower jaw development. The poor kid had huge cheeks when he was born, and even though they've been steadily thinning out as he's grown, he still needed to strengthen those muscles to say certain sounds. This was figured out by our awesome ECI therapist and coordinator, both of whom I appreciate SO MUCH, for all the great information and tools they've given us over the past year. The second problem, I think, was just an overall slowness to develop fine motor skills. That's one of the fascinating things I've learned over the past year is that speaking and eating with a spoon all stem from the same part of the brain. He had trouble with both until just a few months ago. And the final thing giving him trouble (and this still does) is talking too fast and laziness to say things clearly. He just rushes through it and I have to remind him to slow down and say it right, so other people can understand him. But I can be proud that Jav and I have worked SO HARD in trying to improve his speech, (Gabriel's worked hard too), and even though we still need to work on a couple of consonants, we are seeing the results.

I'm not sure whether or not he'll still need therapy. Jav still has some trouble understanding him at times, especially over the phone. We were supposed to have our final Re-Evaluation with the Speech Therapist and our Therapy Coordinator this past Wednesday, but through a series of misunderstandings on their part, they didn't show up. I think this will be very valuable information to have, though, in our decision as to whether to keep going (which from this point will be paid for out of our pocket because our insurance doesn't cover any of it and he's too far along to qualify for the FW public school therapy program.) They will basically give him the same tests, updated a little due to being a year older, that they gave him when he started the program and see how much he's progressed. So we're trying to reschedule before he turns 3 a week from Sunday.

All of this has made me very interested in possibly furthering my education and pursuing some type of career in early child development or speech therapy when I have to go back to work. Supposedly the therapists are so badly needed right now that they all set their own hours, which would work beautifully with having to take and pickup kiddos from school. I'm not sure, though, how it would work with school holidays or summers, and that's still the only thing giving me pause.

I'm just so glad to be able to communicate with him now, all the time!!!