Learning to Express
When I flip the month on the calendar, I know it’s time to do two things: Pay the credit card bill and fret about Abbie’s speech. She’s at 17 months, and still not much meaningful speech. She says “more” (“mo”) when I’m feeding her, “book” (“buh”) when I ask if she wants to read, “mbuh” constantly in every other situation, and that’s it. She doesn’t voluntarily say anything meaningful. She doesn’t say, or really even seem to recognize, “mama” or “dada” like she should have done six months ago. She doesn’t babble a dizzying array of syllables like she should have done eight months ago. She doesn’t complain about the spinach I keep feeding her like any child should.
At the month’s beginning, I started poking around the internet and my bevy of parenting magazines with gender-confused addresses looking for information about talking. I found lots of information about how children develop at this age, about how they should constantly be learning new words and maybe even forming simple sentences, but not to worry if your child is behind because all children develop at their own pace. However if you do feel like worrying, every publication was happy to list critical warning signs that your child might be dangerously far behind in communication. These signs include: Says less than five meaningful words by 18 months (“yes, she’s not 18 months yet, but I’m not holding my breath”), doesn’t respond to her name (“no, she knows her name”), says the same word such as “dah” in all situations (yes, she only says “mbuh”), and shows limited ability for imaginative play such as unable to pretend feed a doll (yes, and OH MY GOD I’D NEVER EVEN THOUGHT OF THAT!!!!”).
Convinced that Abbie was mired in a communicative quagmire from which she would never recover, I took her to her pediatrician last week. I raised concerns about her communication at her 12-month and 15-month checkups, and both times he told me not to worry, that she’d catch up. In fact, any day now the floodgates would open and she’d unleash a flurry of words that would make “Ulysses” look like “My Little Opposites Book.” Sometime in the past couple months I stopped believing him and started believing that the only way to help her speak was to diagnose exactly what was holding her back. That way I could fret more efficiently. Plus if we need to do intensive speech lessons with her we need to do them soon because once the twins arrive, we won’t have much time to micromanage her life. I figure that we’ll be happy with anything she does as long as she doesn’t scream, or at least keeps her screaming at a volume low enough to let the twins sleep.
The pediatrician listened to our concerns, agreed that she was behind, and agreed to refer us to a speech therapist to assist her. Or possibly he just wanted us to quit bugging him about it. Either way, I took her to a speech therapist this week for an evaluation. This involved the therapist playing with her, asking her to point to things or carry out simple tasks while I sat quietly in the corner unless spoken to. It was difficult to sit idly watching her flounder as she thoroughly destroyed my dream of raising the World’s Smartest Child Ever, but I knew something wasn’t mentally clicking. If asking her to take blocks out of the box was the way to help her, then so be it.
After completing the test and depleting Abbie’s reserves of patience, the therapist showed us the results. There, in black and white, was proof that Abbie had failed her first test. It's strange that none of the baby books leave a space to commemorate that first. It showed her comprehension was a little behind, which isn’t surprising since most interactions with her tend to still be one-sided. It also showed that her “expression” was way behind, and by “way behind,” I mean that in one measurement she was in the bottom 1-percentile of her peers. Apparently she has to be able to express herself in some way before she registers on that scale.
Now we’re in a holding pattern, waiting for our insurance company to approve treatment.* The therapist is framing the request in terms of ear infections hindering her ability to hear. This sounds like a bit of a stretch to me since she didn’t suffer an inordinate number of ear infections, but it’s no more of a stretch than an insurance company refusing to pay for speech therapy for a toddler in the bottom 1-percentile of her peers.
Hopefully my worrying is all for nothing. Hopefully the floodgates do open and words come spilling out of her mouth before our insurance even has a chance to deny us. Hopefully she’s been so focused on learning to walk and discovering new ways to fall and injure herself that she just forgot to learn to talk. Right now, I’d be ecstatic hearing anything meaningful coming from her mouth, even complaints about the spinach she’s having for supper.
* I hate the insurance industry, even if they are Des Moines’s major employer.
At the month’s beginning, I started poking around the internet and my bevy of parenting magazines with gender-confused addresses looking for information about talking. I found lots of information about how children develop at this age, about how they should constantly be learning new words and maybe even forming simple sentences, but not to worry if your child is behind because all children develop at their own pace. However if you do feel like worrying, every publication was happy to list critical warning signs that your child might be dangerously far behind in communication. These signs include: Says less than five meaningful words by 18 months (“yes, she’s not 18 months yet, but I’m not holding my breath”), doesn’t respond to her name (“no, she knows her name”), says the same word such as “dah” in all situations (yes, she only says “mbuh”), and shows limited ability for imaginative play such as unable to pretend feed a doll (yes, and OH MY GOD I’D NEVER EVEN THOUGHT OF THAT!!!!”).
Convinced that Abbie was mired in a communicative quagmire from which she would never recover, I took her to her pediatrician last week. I raised concerns about her communication at her 12-month and 15-month checkups, and both times he told me not to worry, that she’d catch up. In fact, any day now the floodgates would open and she’d unleash a flurry of words that would make “Ulysses” look like “My Little Opposites Book.” Sometime in the past couple months I stopped believing him and started believing that the only way to help her speak was to diagnose exactly what was holding her back. That way I could fret more efficiently. Plus if we need to do intensive speech lessons with her we need to do them soon because once the twins arrive, we won’t have much time to micromanage her life. I figure that we’ll be happy with anything she does as long as she doesn’t scream, or at least keeps her screaming at a volume low enough to let the twins sleep.
The pediatrician listened to our concerns, agreed that she was behind, and agreed to refer us to a speech therapist to assist her. Or possibly he just wanted us to quit bugging him about it. Either way, I took her to a speech therapist this week for an evaluation. This involved the therapist playing with her, asking her to point to things or carry out simple tasks while I sat quietly in the corner unless spoken to. It was difficult to sit idly watching her flounder as she thoroughly destroyed my dream of raising the World’s Smartest Child Ever, but I knew something wasn’t mentally clicking. If asking her to take blocks out of the box was the way to help her, then so be it.
After completing the test and depleting Abbie’s reserves of patience, the therapist showed us the results. There, in black and white, was proof that Abbie had failed her first test. It's strange that none of the baby books leave a space to commemorate that first. It showed her comprehension was a little behind, which isn’t surprising since most interactions with her tend to still be one-sided. It also showed that her “expression” was way behind, and by “way behind,” I mean that in one measurement she was in the bottom 1-percentile of her peers. Apparently she has to be able to express herself in some way before she registers on that scale.
Now we’re in a holding pattern, waiting for our insurance company to approve treatment.* The therapist is framing the request in terms of ear infections hindering her ability to hear. This sounds like a bit of a stretch to me since she didn’t suffer an inordinate number of ear infections, but it’s no more of a stretch than an insurance company refusing to pay for speech therapy for a toddler in the bottom 1-percentile of her peers.
Hopefully my worrying is all for nothing. Hopefully the floodgates do open and words come spilling out of her mouth before our insurance even has a chance to deny us. Hopefully she’s been so focused on learning to walk and discovering new ways to fall and injure herself that she just forgot to learn to talk. Right now, I’d be ecstatic hearing anything meaningful coming from her mouth, even complaints about the spinach she’s having for supper.
* I hate the insurance industry, even if they are Des Moines’s major employer.
posted by Matt at
9:57 PM
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