When Will was fifteen months, he said "ma"...and that was it. His pediatrician referred him to a local program that evaluates and provides therapy for developmental delays. I didn't call. He was fifteen months. He was slow, but fine. Over the next five months, he learned to run and jump, climb out of everything, color with crayons, build towers with blocks and a hundred other things...except to speak. I didn't even think about it until one night when he was nineteen months. Matt and I were talking about the fact that he doesn't say anything yet, and I realized not only does he lack words, he lacks all consonants except "M" and "B". An alarm went off in my head. That was definitely not normal. He never babels. Ever. He grunts and makes vowel sounds when he wants things, but his speech hasn't developed at all since that fifteen month appointment. I finally called the office of that program and set up an evaluation. Most likely they would say everything's totally fine, but after talking to a good friend who's daughter had similar developmental patterns and did have a need for speech therapy I figured it was worth investigating.
This morning, after two hours of playing with toys and answering a million questions with the evaluators (he did the former, I did the latter), a semi verdict is in. He is right on track developmentally for everything - except expressive communication (aka speech). His speech is at an 8 month old level.
Will is tongue tied and the speech person suggested this could be the problem. All of his consonant sounds are done with the lips and not the tongue. For those who don't know what "tongue tied" is, it is when the frenulum connects the tongue further toward the end than normal, thus restricting movement of the tongue. You can tell when they stick their tongue out (if they can stick it out) it is heart shaped. This naturally interferes with eating and speaking directly proportionate to the severity of the tongue tie. Fixing it is quite simple. Joe had his frenulum clipped at two weeks and I had mine clipped at five. It takes two seconds and heals quite quickly. Total frustration. I took Will in at one week and told his pediatrician that Will was tongue tied - I saw it, and he wasn't latching quite right - making it extra painful to nurse) but she said it wasn't bad enough to worry about. I kind of wish I had just pressed the issue. I just didn't want to do an unnecessary procedure. Oh well. Nothing to do about it now.
If that is the only problem - Huzzah! So, now what. We will be taking Will to someone who specializes in that kind of thing for an evaluation and probably just to clip it, and in about a month from now, he will start speech therapy so we can see better exactly what the cause of the delay is.
I am not a big interventionist. I figure kids are good and will develop when they want to, but I am glad that we got Will evaluated. I knew there was something off.
