My son had a speech evaluation this past week. It has been determined that he needs to attend speech therapy twice a week. My cousin attended speech therapy when he was my son’s age. From what I’ve heard, speech therapy is very helpful for late talkers.
I was very apprehensive before my son’s evaluation. I didn’t know what to expect. I went to the speech and hearing center, which is on a college campus about fifteen miles from our home. I took my son in and filled out the registration papers.
When it was time for us to go back with the clinicians, I was not sure how my son would react. They gave me the choice of staying with him in the room he would be in or going to an observation room. I chose to go to the observation room, thinking my son may be more cooperative without me in the room.
My son never seemed to question where I was. I watched everything from the observation room through a one way mirror. I could also hear everything that was said through a speaker in the observation room.
The clinician’s were very good with my son. They played with him with blocks in the beginning to get him to warm up to them before they began their evaluation. Next, they moved on to asking him to identify pictures in a book.
Because my son wasn’t cooperating well with the pictures, they moved on to some other games, asking him to identify objects in the room. They do some of the evaluation by watching the child play, respond to casual conversation and while watching the child eat and drink during a snack time.
The evaluation took nearly two hours. My son did well because they varied the toys and games so that he didn’t get bored with it. Next, they did the paper evaluation and scored their findings using comparison charts.
Finally, my son went to play in a sand box with a clinician while the other clinician and the physician gave me the results. They told me that there were concerns as to why my son wasn’t responding to some questions and that they did recommend speech therapy.
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