Speech Pathologist

As I have mentioned in the 20 month birthday post, Daddy and Mommy have been working on Andrew's speech especially combining words and have been a tad concerned about his speech development specifically his ability to understand a great deal, but not communciate nearly as much and his pronounciation. As a precautionary measure, we made an appointment with a speech language pathologist at the Speech, Language, and Learning Clinic at Texas Children's Hosptial for Andrew to receive a speech evaluation.

Their appointments were booked all the way into December, but luckily, there was a cancellation and our appointment was set for today (they called to offer us the appointment last Thurday). So lucky! In the beginning of our appointment, the speech language pathologist, Anna, questioned me about Andrew's development and speech. Then, she started with the evaluation. The first part of the evaluation was to assess how Andrew spoke, such as vocabulary and pronounciation. Anna showed Andrew some pictures and asked him to identify them. The second part was to assess Andrew's comprehension, such as how Andrew understands words and directions.

Daddy came from the office and joined us a little while after the first part of the testing. Anna told us that Andrew speaks on the level of a normal 19-20 month old, but comprehends on a 26-27 month old. Anna said that she is only really concerned with how large the gap is between his speech and comprehension. After we discussed with Anna our options and her thoughts, we have concluded that we will come back in four months (when Andrew turns two) for another assessment to see if Andrew's speech has improved and/or if the gap has narrowed. Anna also gave us some tips and ideas for working on Andrew's speech. Hopefully, we will be able to use them with some success.

But Andrew did so well during our appointment. He was really cooperative during the testing. I wasn't sure how he would react towards Anna seeing how he just met her, but he was good about answering her questions. There were some parts of the appointment where he was too busy playing with the toys that she had laid out (she used them as props during the testing). But for the most part, Mommy was impressed with how cooperative he was. My sweet boy!

I am posting pictures taken today of my dapper little man. Thanks to Ngoai for the sweatshirt and shirt. Thanks to Uncle Rick and Aunt Anh Thu (and Brennan) for the pants. And thanks to Uncle John and Aunt Sharon for the Robeez. They matched perfectly; and I didn't even plan it!