Bobo's Speech Evaluation

First an update on the potty training. He is doing quite well. Today I did pull-up at church, and of course he had an accident in it. The other accident he had was when we went to Target and I had forgotten to take him to the bathroom and he fell asleep in the cart and had an accident. Of course every BM is an accident. Enough with the potty talk!

Bobo had his speech evaluation this past Friday. Of course the weather was disastrous, after I got to the office (late of course) I heard there had been 12 accidents on the road. No wonder I hadn't been moving on the freeway. The power was out in the building when we arrive and they were wondering if I could reschedule or do it by flashlight. I chose to go ahead and try the evaluation. We found a room that wasn't too dark and the electricity came on about half way through.

Bobo had to name items that the therapist pulled out of a bag. This was used to see how well he could say his sounds. The next test, I can't remember the exact name, but it was testing his language knowledge. She would ask him things from a flip chart, like which one is a man out of a couple of pictures, and he would point to the man, or out of a group of symbols he had to pick out which one was a letter. She told me he got to the 7 year old age group with this, still not sure what that means, but Bobo is 3, so of course it makes a Mom feel good, even if it doesn't mean much. Last he had his vocabulary test, where he had to tell the names of things in a flip book. For example there were a variety of different animals on a page and the therapist would say, "All of these are....", and Bobo was supposed to say animals, and if he didn't then it was counted wrong.

Well he really needs speech therapy. I am going to call my insurance tomorrow and find out what they will cover. From what I understand is that they usually don't cover speech therapy, unless it is needed because of a stroke or an accident/head injury. The sessions where I went would be $300 a pop! OUCH!!!! He would qualify for state help, but I have my reservations about using the state and also it is a group setting, which we were suggested that if he did that, that he got one on one therapy too. They also told me of another speech place in town that charged $80-$140 a session, which is cheaper, but if insurance doesn't cover anything, I'm not sure what we'll be able to do.

Bobo doesn't make a lot of the consonant sounds he should be able to make, the therapist found it unusual that he could make a few like an R sound that aren't usually at this age. He drops off middle and ending of words too often and even sometimes the beginning of the word. She said that he seems like he is already starting to compensate for his speech delay, and not using a larger vocabulary. For example when a picture of a truck would come up, he would call it a car, possibly because it is easier for him to say car. I know he knows the word truck.

Well tomorrow we'll find out about the insurance & I'll update again.