Just read your last 2 blogs - I can completely sympathize with the blood draw/IV thing - nobody knows unless they personally have seen everything go black - it is a wierd feeling. And for the speech therapy - I'm sure which ever road you choose will help - I bet Adrienne has some good suggestions - I guess I just figured he was a normal boy who doesn't want to spend much time talking so he just says the first syllable as not to waste his time and effort on talking and more on "doing"! I am glad they have all these programs though - we'll be praying for Iliya's successful outpatient surgery Friday.
love Sis

The straw cup is a great idea. Take a look at therapyshoppe.com -- they've got tons of great products. I've bought some of their chewing things for Slugger. (Chewing releases anxiety for him.)

I didn't read through all of the suggestions from the last post, but I have one. My SIL is a speech therapist so that is why we never put Oleg in speech despite his obvious delay when we got him. She worked with him on specific letter sounds when she would come to visit (primarily S). But one thing she said (besides the straw cup) is to get straws of varying thickness. Start with a McDonalds or slurpee straw and work down to a swizzle stick size. Have him blow a cotton ball around the table with the straw. Very simple and fun. Also, we use water whistles in the bath tub. Noisy, but fun and they work that blowing muscle too.

I'm frustrated because your little guy has come soooo far in such little time. Speech therapy is fine, I'm all for it, but I guess I wanted them to appluad Iliya's accomplishments too. The therapy, in addition to all that fun straw stuff, will help him...I just think Iliya is doing so well for only being home 6 or 7 months.

Hi, Melissa,

You are welcome to email or call me if you want.

As a speech-language pathologist who specializes in children of this age, I want to jump in and say although it sounds fun to practice blowing across a table with a straw or using one to try to "strenghthen" oral muscles, this is not something I would recommend for Iliya or any child who just has a speech delay. I would recommend using a straw and/or open cup for drinking to train his tongue to go backward for speech and swallowing (rather than a sippy cup....functional activities...) to help to create an accurate tongue position for an /s/ sound (try to prevent a lisp), and I might recommend a blowing activity IF Iliya had difficulty with breath support for speech such as with some children with CP, but there is no evidence that these fun-sounding activities improve speech production.

As a fellow adoptive mother, I would say go with your gut. If you feel like he needs therapy, go for it. He will likely need a speech-language evaluation first to determine if he actually does need therapy (we require one). If you feel like he doesn't, wait.

Here are some of the questions I would ask a parent of a 2 year, 4 month old child to determine if he may need a speech-language evaluation:

1) Does your child understand 2-step directions? For example, "Go get the bus and bring it to me," "Get the cup and give the baby a drink," "Go get your coat and put it on," "Get the banana and put in on the table," etc.

2) Does he understand a variety of object, action, possessive, and locational words? For example, "Where's Mommy's shoe?," "Show me your shoe," "Put the dog in the chair," "Look behind you," etc.

3) How many words does your child use (not imitated but on his own)? Most children at age 2 use 200 or more words.

4) Does he combine words into a variety of 2-3 word phrases such as "Hi/Bye Mommy" (greeting+person/object), "Go car" (requesting action/verb+object), "My ball" (possessive+noun), "More ball" (requesting recurrence/adverb+noun), "Mama go" (request action/person/noun+verb), "Help please" (requesting assistance), "All done playing" (requesting termination), "in chair" (location/preposition+noun), etc. By 2 1/2, we look for 3 word combinations such as "pour water out" (action+object+location), "I want a ball," etc.

5) How does he pronounce the words he says? Is he able to produce /p,b,m,t,d,n,h,w/? These are the sounds children should be able to produce before 3. At 3, we add /k,g/ and at 4 we add /f,v,s/. It is very common for children under 3 to use consonant and/or syllable harmony when producing words with multiple syllables (e.g., "buhbuh" for "bubbles" and "gog" for "dog") or to reverse beginning and ending sounds (e.g., "pot" for "top"), and this is okay. It is also common for children under 3 to leave the final consonant sounds off of words (e.g., "ca" for "cat"), and this is okay. Many children at this age say /t/ for /k/ (e.g., "tat" for "cat."), and this is okay until 3! It is also okay for a child of this age to reduce blends such as "boo" for "blue" and "top" for "stop."

6) Is he frustrated that other people can't understand him?

It is quite possible that Iliya is using these patterns called "phonological processes," and they are completely typical for children of this age. He has come such a long way so quickly!!!

My theory from working with children who were "late talkers" or who have been adopted internationally over 18 months is that they learn to talk so quickly when they do start talking that their vocabularies blossom but their articulation (the way they produce sounds in words) suffers as a consequence. This has definitely happened with Owen. I've started slowing him down a little and trying to make him focus a little more on how he says words. He tries and sometimes gets closer to a correct production, but he just isn't able to do some sounds and sound combinations yet. For example, he can say "apple" but when he tries 3 syllables in "applesauce" he says "apple" and can't do the last syllable. He can imitate "sauce" but can't put it all together. Same thing with "water." He says "wahwah" which is completely normal for his age, but we've tried to get "water" and he tries but can't do it yet. We break it down into "Ter" and then "Wah" + "ter," but his little system isn't quite ready for this yet.

I'm happy to answer more questions. Hope this helps!

Big hugs,
Adrienne
owensmommyadrienne@gmail.com

A child can actually qualify for EI for speech or OT alone. I would ask for a re-evaluation. Make sure not to overly talk up his attributes but focus on his delays. This will help the eval.

They must provide services if your child qualifies. If he is having oral motor problems that is a sign he might need more assistance. My son's both were delayed in speech but my daughter even with CL/CP is a talking champion!! She qualified only in Speech alone.

Email me if you need to. I had three kids in EI.

Just another thought, Iliya is not that far away from 36 months and in Texas as soon as the child reaches 36 months they are covered by the local school district for services which include speech. If you do have to pay out of pocket, it might not be that long until you can get him qualified under the public school umbrella. Maybe you could look into the Alabama policy on that.