Friday, May 16, 2008

Be careful what you wish for

Trish – thanks for your comments. We are working on baby signs with Caleb, and we will do them with Baylee, too, but unfortunately, our reason for doing them with Caleb is our of necessity.

I may have mentioned before that Amata is a tad bit hyper. She can also talk non-stop. If she is not talking she is singing, and if she is not doing either, you better go check on her because she is probably getting into trouble. I realize that she is female, but even so, she talks a lot! I have thought once or twice that it would be nice to have a child that maybe didn’t talk quite so much.

Caleb does not talk at all. He understands what you tell him. For example, if you tell him to throw something in the garbage he will. If you tell him to throw something in the laundry he will. If you tell him no, he will at least pause for a moment. But as of right now, he does not say ANY words. Not even mommy, daddy, or bye-bye. He will wave good-bye, but he won’t say it. And, actually, he really doesn’t even have any consonant sounds that he uses on a regular basis.

As much as we hope that he doesn’t have fetal alcohol syndrome, the fact is we know that his biological mother consumed alcohol when she was pregnant with him, and we know that he has been slightly behind on reaching his milestones.


The school began working with him a couple of months ago and we have seen some improvement already. Currently he knows signs for the words more, bubbles & milk. He has also made up his own sign for good night (to be honest, the sign he uses for "more" is kind of his own version, too, but it's close to the real sign). Also, since they have been working with him we have also heard him say "mo" which I think is because "more" is the sign we’ve been working on the most. Chris said he also heard a B sound from him.

We know he is capable of talking, and that his hearing is fine, so it should be just a matter of time. At least it better be, I just don’t know if I could learn American Sign Language at this point!

The ironic part, though, is that even though our main concern with Caleb is his speech, the person that specifically works with early education language problems is not the one working with Caleb. The problem is that even though he doesn't talk, his receptive language skills were actually a little bit above average, and with her testing, the state requires that overall he be a least 2 levels below average. So even though his speech is 2 levels below, his receptive skills bring the average up too far for him to qualify to work with her. Don't you just love government policies!! Luckily, for the person that does overall early education services, he just had to be low in one area for her to be able to work with him.

I know other children that our school has worked with on their speech, and they do a great job. I'm sure it will be a slow road, but I am confident that with the schools help he will begin talking more. And then I'll probably be wishing for the quieter days again. (LOL)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh that just breaks my heart when I hear of women who drink/smoke/drugs when pregnant. They really don't know (or care I guess) what precious cargo they are carrying. Caleb (and the others) are so lucky to have you as their mommy! :) I enjoy reading your stories and, as a mommy myself, connecting with another mom even through the web is great. I wish you luck with Caleb's speech!