Situation Normal

We had Abbie’s speech tested, and she’s officially normal!*

This is a giant milestone in her development. We first had her tested at 18-months, and the results were unsurprising and depressing. Her receptive speech, the speech she understands, rested at the bottom of the normal range for her peer group. Her expressive speech, the communication she uses, hovered just above that of a rock, but that was only because a rock can’t scream or sign a half-dozen words. We knew she was behind, hence why she was tested, and were anxious to help her communicate her desires for us to grab a snack for her.

It was interesting to sit through the test and see what she can do. She knows her numbers, colors, and shapes. She doesn’t know many emotions beyond happy and sad, and even those are hit and miss. She can label probably hundreds of nouns right now. She doesn’t do possessives unless it’s with a proper name like “Abbie’s,” “Ian’s,” “Tory’s,” etc. She can do some problem solving like what happens when a ball falls in the water.** She doesn’t understand negatives, such as “the girl is not climbing the tree.” She can semi-accurately spot the one that doesn’t belong in a group, which was nice to see since that’s a 5-year-old task.

She has a long way to go to develop at a faster than normal rate in order to catch up to average for her peers. Maybe she can even pass average for her peers so she’ll have something to fall back on in case that collegiate athletic scholarship doesn’t happen.

* Normal here refers only to her falling within a range clinically accepted as “normal” for her age group. Her speech is still below average for her peers, and that doesn’t even factor in her woefully inadequate articulation. It also only measures what she can do, ignoring the fact that she’d usually rather scream when she wants pretzels instead of asking nicely like we know she can do.
** It gets wet.