About 2 weeks ago, Mark and I went to a dinner party at the house of a wonderful couple from church. They periodically invite over about 5 couples who are from different "circles" of friendships and have a great evening of enjoying dinner, games, and getting to know one another more. It's awesome! I could go on an on about how special this couple is but back to my main post...
During the dinner, I was chatting with one of my friends who is a Doctor at Carle. The Early Intervention program came up in our discussion which led to a few emails and some referrals and BAM! that's where we are today.
I met with the coordinator for the Early Intervention Program this morning to fill out paperwork for Samuel and Hannah to be evaluated for speech and development. That free evaluation will take place at our home on March 28th. I'm very much looking forward to seeing where we stand and seeing if we need to further therapy (especially speech).
At 18 months, Sam was evaluated at the Post NICU Developmental follow-up clinic and passed the developmental part fine. The only slight concern was his speech. The Carle Speech Therapist said that because the twins were such late walkers that their speech may take a while to blossom. Apparently, when kiddos are focusing on a skill like walking or crawling, everything else sort of stops while they learn to do those skills. She said that we should check with our doc at 2 years and go from there.
I wasn't real happy with that conclusion as I know they are both lacking in the speech department. Don't get me wrong, they babble constantly. They "talk" to each other and then giggle, they'll point to things and babble and they'll say a handful of words. Their ability to understand things is perfect though. I can give them 2 part commands (i.e. go upstairs and get your bear) and they follow those fine. They can point to things when I ask them as well. So, I wasn't worried so much about the ability to understand - just the ability to express.
After talking with the coordinator this morning while she was at our home, I feel very excited to take this next step of evaluation. I gave her all pertinent info from the time they were born to now including milestones, meds they were given in the NICU and personality quirks. We talked about words they did say, if they seem to get frustrated easily with communication, and how well they understand. She did make a good point that the fact that they understand things just fine but just don't express communication is better than if it were backwards. It's easier to help them with expressing words than with comprehension. They also will point to things if you ask them to "point to the duck" so we know their comprehension is fine. She said from what I had told her during our brief chat this morning (and mind you she's not a speech therapist - just been around this for a while), that Sam and Hannah would probably both be qualified for the speech therapy program (qualification means that they have a 30% or more delay in speech communication). Apparently the guideline is that at 2, kiddos should have a vocabulary of around 50 words.
We'll know more on the 28th of March when my babes are evaluated in both speech and development but for now I'm just continuing to work with them daily as I have been... flashcards, lots of books, and lots of snuggling mixed in! The coordinator said that a lot of times this happens with preemies, especially twins, because (1) they are a little behind in general and (2) they develop their own language so they don't need to talk. It also makes a difference that they have an older sister that has very advanced vocabulary and speech (I was told today). So, we'll see... if they do qualify for speech therapy, I'm excited to begin and see how much my babes will grow leaps and bounds! So, pray for us in this process! I'm excited to see how the Lord will use our family...
