Noah has been in speech for two years. When he was first assessed for speech, the therapist said that he was only 20% intelligible and he made 43 articulation errors during the assessment. She was very concerned that people would not be able to tell what Noah was saying unless they knew him and his speech patterns. They determined that he needed help with articulation and so for two years, Noah has been seeing a speech therapist for 30 minutes, once a week. The hope was that he would be exited from the special education program before he went to Kindergarten. Noah loved his speech sessions. He fondly referred to it at "word school." He would ask every day, "Mommy, I go to word school today??" Summers were sad for him because he didn't get to go to speech.
Noah is one of the lucky ones. The combination of his determination and the support from his therapist and family, has proven that early intervention works. Last week, Noah was reassessed for articulation and only made 16 errors. And of those 16, all but two of them had to do with the "l" and "th" sound. These two sounds are not expected to be mastered by children until age 6 or 7. Noah met and exceeded his goal. We are so proud and so grateful to his two therapists over the last two years. I am also thankful for my mom who works with Noah on his words when I am at work. At Noah's annual IEP meeting, Mrs. Gray, his therapist officially dismissed him from speech. She loves him, but can't legally keep him because not only is he on track now, he is ahead of where he should be for a child his age. This was a bittersweet moment for David and me. No parent should be sad when their child is exited from special ed., but I know how much Noah will miss Mrs. Gray and word school, and I know how beneficial each session has been to him. **sigh**
On a happy note, I was able to capture this sweet interaction between Noah and Mrs. Gray. I'm sorry the first half of it is a bit blurry. Don't know what happened there.
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