More on Colton's Speech

Time for an update on Colton! 

Remember how it cost $600 to get a speech evaluation and I didn't know what to do about his stuttering?  Shortly after that, I remembered that a friend from church had a daughter in speech therapy (this little girl doesn't stutter, she just doesn't say anything that anyone can understand).  So I asked my friend how she'd gone about doing this and she said, "Just have the schools do the evaluation.  It's all free then."

WHAT????

How had I not known about this???

Thank goodness she told me before I shelled out that $600 for it!!!  I made phone calls, found the right person, set up an initial appointment where they just talk to me to find out why I think there's a problem.  Then this lady-- her name is Blake and she's tall and blonde and pretty and I always want to call her Blake Lively, but I think it's actually Blake Walter or something-- came to our home and spent an hour hanging out with Colton and playing games with him and taking notes on how he speaks.  I was delighted with how the evaluation went-- that morning Colton hadn't been stuttering at all and I was worried she wouldn't believe me or something (kinda like how your car NEVER makes that weird noise for the mechanic!) but after the full hour was up, I felt like she'd gotten a really good idea of how he talks.  Also, she came during spring break, so most of my kids were home and I was afraid she wouldn't hear Colton at all.  But Ryder ended up going to a friend's house, and the other kids were VERY well behaved and helpful for the whole thing. 

Within a week she sent me her report, including her personal recommendation that he receive services and set up our next meeting to decide if he would actually receive services.  (All this stuff is government regulated so there are a TON of bureaucratic steps to the process-- fortunately we've been through it all getting speech therapy for Bentley, and Craig had learned about all this in grad school AND we've worked with great, competent people, so everything has gone very smoothly.  I imagine if any of those factors didn't play into it, this could be a real nightmare.)  Craig was able to attend that meeting, too, so we all sat around a big table while they went over the report with us and explained that Colton falls right in the middle of "moderate stuttering"-- it's not severe, but it's definitely there.  Blake explained that she recommended therapy but that it was a group decision and then asked what we thought.

Well, that seemed sort of silly.  I mean, why would I have gone through this whole process if I wasn't interested in him getting therapy?  But I didn't want to appear too eager, either, so I asked a few questions-- what does speech therapy for a 4-year-old entail? is it effective?-- and when I was assured that it is very effective I just said, "Well, yeah, I think we should do this."  And everyone looked VERY relieved.

I found out later from Craig that it actually isn't all that uncommon for people to refuse services for their children, but that's usually for kids whose teachers are recommending they be evaluated.  So I can see how that might have a very different feel to the whole process.

I had one last meeting with Blake to sign all the paperwork, and then the speech therapist at my kids' school emailed me to set up his first appointment, which was on Wednesday!

Colton was thrilled.  He's been dying to go to school since September, so this was a dream come true.  I had to carefully correct some of the wrong ideas he had about it, though-- like when he said he couldn't wait to ride the school bus, and when he told me that his teacher would make him breakfast (???).  But mostly he was just happy as could be about the whole thing.  He bounced all over the office while we waited for his teacher, and when she brought him back a half hour later he bounced all the way back to the car.

I'm glad we finally got through this whole process.  And I'm glad he'll be getting some help for his stutter.  And I'm glad my little boy is so happy to finally be going to school!