When your heart is breaking for your child

Junior had a meeting today with the local public school speech therapist. He has a problem with articulation – he has had it for years and in fact has been tested before. It wasn’t bad enough for therapy and he would grow out of it according to the previous speech therapist.

 

(insert snarky comment here)

 

I have been trying to work with him but to be honest, I don’t really know what I am doing. I think if he had gotten the therapy when he was tested, he wouldn’t have a habit of saying the words wrong. It doesn’t help that I feel responsible too, should I have taken him elsewhere and gotten a second opinion?

 

Anyway,  we did an initial assessment to see if he did have articulation issues or I was a paranoid, over-protective mama.

 

Well, I may be a paranoid, overprotective mama but he does have articulation issues.

 

So after that he got a treat (he was very nervous about the whole thing) and then we came home to do more schooling. We were working on reading and sounding out and the word was “last.” He would say “l-a-s-t; l-a-s-t; wask.” We spent some time trying to get him to say “last” instead of “wask” when he knows all the sounds, he just can’t put them together right in a word.

 

Suddenly he burst into tears and said “This is just how God made me and I can’t fix it!” Y’all, my heart broke. He thought he was the only kid in the world to need speech therapy.  He was absolutely amazed to find out that his dad,  uncle and a cousin all had speech therapy. He said “why didn’t you tell me?”

 

I thought he knew.

 

So now we wait until he can have the real testing done again. After which the speech therapist is going to give me ways I can work with him over the summer  - his test isn’t going to be until May and so he won’t be doing formal therapy until next year. But I think he is feeling better about the whole thing.