Ryan’s teacher approached me about getting him some speech therapy. He’s only a young three years old, but he does have a problem with a few letter sounds. He can’t sound out the letter F, he says ‘bake’ instead of ‘rake’, and his V’s sound like D’s. I thought this was probably normal for his age.
I was a teacher before I had Ryan, but by no means do I know anything about speech problems. I asked Ryan’s doctor if he agreed with the teacher. He said yes because Ryan can’t correct the sound when I coach him.
So today was step one of the process to see if he really does need to attend speech therapy.
The hearing test. This is the first step because if there’s a problem here, it explains why he’s having a speech problem.
Todd came with me for moral support since I wasn’t quite sure how Ryan was going to handle them testing his ears. He’s great with his regular doctor, but this was something new.
We prepped him on what was going to happen before we went upstairs to the Audiologist. He was okay with it. So far, so good, I thought.
Then we met the doc and she was so nice and caring. Bonus!
For the first test Ryan was able to sit on my lap and hold the monitor – so he thought that was cool. Another bonus!
The second test was a little more involved though. He had these ear plugs in each ear while sitting in the sound booth. She was on the outside of the booth, with her headset, where she could talk to Ryan and feed him sounds in his ears. When he heard a beep, I had to hand him a block and he put it in a container. Once again, having me in there and getting to play with some cool blocks made everything a little easier! You guessed it…another bonus!
After the doc did the beeping sound test, then there was a test where the computer would say a word and he would have to repeat it, if he could hear it. These words were a wide range of volume - from normal sounding conversation to a quiet whisper.
As a mom, that was just a sweet moment. I hear him talk all the time, but for some reason, hearing him say these words made me tear up! He had to say words like ‘cupcake’ and ‘hotdog’, but I’m not sure why those words made me emotional! It’s a mom thing, I guess! Silly me!
Both tests came out fine. No problems. Our next step is to have Ryan meet with the Speech Therapist so she can assess him. That will be in 20 days.
I’m just glad everything went so well today. The Audiologist said she wished all her patients were as well behaved as Ryan! He was so cooperative and pleasant! That’s my boy!
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