Camp's Speech Update

Several months ago I updated you on Camp's speech progress and I thought it was time for another update. About two weeks ago he had a detailed speech evaluation with Melissa from Advantage Speech Therapy. She is a sweet friend and I really trust her judgement when it comes to his speech.

Before we did his speech eval Melissa suggested that we take Camp to have his hearing tested to make sure he wasn't having any trouble hearing. It was very possible that he could since he had a history of having several ear infections when he was small. I took him to a place in Raleigh called Capital ENT to see Dr. Brown. He was so great with Camp. He checked his ears and the fluid on his ears looked fine so he sent us over to have an appointment with the audiologist. The audiologist locked Camp and I in a sound proof room and had me place headphones on Camp. She was outside of the room and would ask him to point to different body parts using different tones inside the headphones. I was amazed at how well he did and she said that his hearing was deemed appropriate for language skills and we didn't have anything to be concerned about. *On a side note, now we know Camp can really hear us when we tell him not to do something so there is no excuse. I see lots more spankings in his near future because we thought he was just having trouble hearing! Nada.

After his hearing test came back normal we didn't waste anytime having his speech evaluation done. Melissa took him in a room at our preschool where just she and Camp did the evaluation. Once she was done she and I sat down to discuss the results. To be honest, it was a bit of a gut shot. I knew he was delayed but not near what he scored on her exam.

Here is just a snap shot of what he scored on the exam. Just for reference, Camp was 2 years, 6 months when he had the evaluation done.

• Developmental Milestones: Delayed
• Behavior During Testing: Age Appropriate
• Evaluation Results:
• Language Assessment:
• Receptive Language Disorder/Delay: Score was 101 with an average range from 85-115, Age Equivalency of Receptive Language Skills: 2 years, 9 months
• Expressive Language  Disorder/Delay: Scored Severe, Score was 63 with an average range from 85-115, Age Equivalency of Expressive Language Skills: 1 year, 2 months
• Hearing: Patients hearing is deemed adequate for speech and language tasks based on therapist's informal observation during assessment.
• Communicative Behaviors Observed:
• Verbalization's (limited)
• Vocalizations
• Gestures
• Limited communicative intent
• Voice: Within Normal Limits
• Fluency: Unable to formally assess due to limited verbalization's
• Recommendations: Treatment is warranted
• Frequency: 2 times per week for 30 minutes per session
• Prognosis with Intervention: Good
• Factors: Prognosis is deemed good with skilled intervention given by his speech therapist.
• Assessments Results:
• Total Language Score:
• Standard Score: 81
• Percentile Rank: 10
• Age Equivalent: 1 year, 11 months
• Receptive Language:
• Standard Score: 101
• Percentile Rank: 53
• Age Equivalent: 2 years, 9 months
• Expressive Language:
• Standard Score: 63
• Percentile Rank: 1
• Age Equivalent: 1 year, 2 months

Okay, so in layman's terms this is what she explained to me. On paper Camp looks much worse than he is. When he is around people he doesn't know well he tends to be shy which is one reason his results were so low. She would ask him questions and he would cover his little face in embarrassment. He did not want to repeat her or answer any questions. However, he scored super high on his Receptive Language. On the report above she only score him at 2 years, 9 months, but she showed me on the test that he scored as high as a 3 1/2 year old on some parts. That just means that he is super smart, but just has trouble communicating which is super frustrating for him and is one of our biggest struggles right now. Melissa said that in his situation it is actually good that he scored so high in the receptive. She said that because he is smart it will be easier for him to pick up on the language skills. We have already been approved through Medicaid and our doctors office to begin his therapy after spring break. He will be receiving speech therapy twice a week for six months and they will be coming to our preschool to do it! That is such a praise item for us. We tried back at Christmas to get him set up with speech but our insurance wouldn't cover it unless we paid in a $3,000 deductible first. Wow. Because Benjamin is taking time off of work to finish his PhD we were able to get the kids covered on Medicaid which will cover his speech 100%!!!! The timing on this is such a God thing.

I will keep you up to date as he progresses. We can't wait to see how much this is going to help him! We love our little stinker.