Those of you who have kids, or know kids, or read blogs about people who have kids may have noticed the lack of pithy blog entries about the funny things that Carter says. This isn't because Carter isn't funny. We think he's very funny. It's just that he doesn't say much.
Ever since his 15-month check up, Carter has been toward the low end of the verbal spectrum, and we've been waiting for the burst of verbal activity that every doctor since then has told us was just around the corner. Shortly after his 2-year checkup, we decided to get him evaluated. While he isn't that far off of where he should be--and we do think that he just has more interest in gross motor development (the kid can climb a rock wall)--he has recently started to become frustrated (and we have, too) by his inability to express himself in a way that we understand. So, we've found him a speech therapist, and he started with her this week.
His speech therapist, who he calls La-La (perhaps you graduate from speech therapy when you can pronounce your therapist's name properly?), seems terrific. She takes a very holistic approach, so in addition to vocal and mouth exercises, Carter is now getting a nightly full body massage with organic coconut oil (wish I could get someone to prescribe that for me) and we'll likely be starting him on fish oil supplements soon. So far (they've had two sessions), Carter LOVES her, loves the 'games' that they play and is amazingly on-task during their work. Unfortunately, he's less inclined to do his homework with us, but that's to be expected. One of the techniques La-La is using with him is sign language. Now that we know Carter is better at expressing himself physically than verbally, we are really wishing that we'd given baby sign language more of chance (I'm pretty sure we gave up on it after about 2 weeks when he was 8 months old), but, cest la vie...
Carter will be meeting with La-La weekly for the foreseeable future. One thing that is helping make that possible is that we are moving Carter into a daycare center in November. We are very sad to be leaving our terrific nanny, but there are lots of benefits of the new school, most of which I won't go into now, but the relevant one is that La-La already works with some other kids in the school. She will pull him out of class to do his therapy on-site, which means that we don't have to take off work every week for it, which is very helpful! It also means that she'll be able to talk directly with his teachers about how they can help him, and she said she'd probably do a session or two in his class to both model for his teachers the things that they can do to help him, and also to allow Carter to show off what he's learning.
I'll do another post in a day or two with more details about the new school and some pictures!
5 comments:
La-La sounds terrific!!
Sounds great! Now I just need someone to prescribe me a full body oil massage and maybe I'll be better at some things, like doing the laundry! We miss you guys and the little man. Let's skype soon!
bren's cousin sawyer, who is about carter's age had the same thing going on, so his mum got him some help (prolly similar to what you're doing) and when i saw him last week, he was talking up a storm! i know it'll work. :) what does the coconut oil do? mum used to massage it into my scalp when i was kid, but that was to keep my hair silky.
when amy was a baby, my parents always wondered when she'd start talking (apparently it took a while). But now they're still wondering if she'll ever STOP! Good luck to Carter in his new classes and at his new school!
I didn't actually start talking until I was closer to 3 - apparently I just didn't have much to say. But once I started... Sounds like you found a great therapist and the school looks terrific!
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