In June of last year, Camden had his evaluation to determine if he qualified for services through the Infant-Toddler program, North Carolina's branch of Early Intervention. At the time, he was just over 18 months old, and was babbling up a storm, but talking very little. He might've had 5 words at the time? The evaluation determined that he didn't technically qualify for services because he scored highly in other areas, but his expressive communication did come back as "mildly delayed". Thus, they evaluator decided to make a clinical recommendation to admit him into the program.
Camden started speech therapy through Early Intervention shortly thereafter, and you may recall that I ended up breaking up with his first therapist after nearly two months and no progress to show for it. (Well, that and the fact that she was habitually late to our sessions.) It was then that I switched Camden to private therapy, where he still remains (and where he has really excelled). I made the decision to keep him in the Infant-Toddler program, though, since apraxia was mentioned as a possible diagnosis before he was talking last year. If he was indeed apraxic, I wanted the option of placing him in a "special" preschool when the time came, ideally a preschool with an SLP on staff. Even though our involvement with the Infant-Toddler program was very little once we made the switch to private therapy, we did still see Camden's caseworker on a bi-monthly basis to check in, and she did come to observe his speech therapy sessions occasionally.
Recently, his caseworker contacted me to let me know that she'd like to schedule a meeting to talk about transition options, since all toddlers have to be transitioned out of the program by the age of 3. We met at my house a week ago and I listened carefully to all of the options, including the specialized preschool that I had been interested in a year ago. However, I knew that these options were no longer the right fit for Camden, and that it would make the most sense to remove him from the program entirely at this point. His caseworker listened to me thoughtfully, and then agreed with my assessment. She said that sometimes parents of the children she works with choose to remove their kids from the program and she strongly advises them against their decision; in Camden's case, though, she said that she felt totally comfortable closing out his file considering all of the progress he's made over the last several months. We met again a few days ago and completed the final paperwork, so Camden is officially done with Early Intervention.
I'll admit that whether or not he still needs to be in speech therapy had been weighing heavily on my mind lately (mostly because private speech therapy is so darn expensive and our insurance has been a nightmare about reimbursing us!). Then, over Easter, my mom made the comment about how well Camden is talking and how she understands so much of what he says now, and my thoughts returned once again to removing him from therapy.
I know there's a broad range of what's considered normal in terms of language development when a child is not quite two and a half. I hear some kids Camden's age that talk in full, complete, adult-like sentences; I hear others that are putting two words together to form short sentences. Camden is somewhere in the middle. He forms up to 6 word sentences now, but they are words strung together and aren't grammatically appropriate all of the time ("Me more milk please, Mommy.") So, I'm guessing his speech is about average for his age? What his therapist is mainly focusing on now is the fact that Camden knows how to make the /h/ sound in isolation, but will consistently leave it off the front of words that start with /h/. So, "hot" is "ot" and "hi" is "iiii". Other than that, she's working on correcting very typical two year old errors, like subsituting a /t/ sound for a /c/ sound (i.e. "cat" is "tat").
Taking all of this into consideration, I had planned on having a discussion with Amanda, his therapist, at our session earlier this week about potentially ending Camden's therapy sometime early this summer. Then, my mom mentioned that she had discussed it with my dad, and he strongly suggested that Camden stay in therapy at least a few more months. He noted how much progress he's made, and that therapy is obviously working, so why quit? He also mentioned the worry of regression without therapy. I should mention that my parents are funding Camden's therapy, so obviously their opinions play an important part in our decision making.
What we ultimately concluded is that Camden will remain in therapy with Amanda until she goes on maternity leave in late August. (Side note: remember my post about Amanda doing IVF at my RE's office? Well, her first round of IVF worked and she is expecting a baby girl about a week after me!). That gives us a few more months to work with, and I will continue to collect material during these months so that I can keep working with Camden at home post-therapy too. Also, that means he'll be nearly three when therapy ends and, if needed, he can always start speech therapy again through the school system once he begins preschool (for free!). I feel very comfortable with this decision.
So, while Camden has graduated from Early Intervention, he'll be sticking out speech therapy for a few more months. I'm so thankful for the progress he's made, and I'm so proud of our little man. If you have a young child with a potential speech delay or disorder that's concerning you, I can't express strongly enough how highly I recommend contacting Early Intervention and starting therapy at a young age. I had my doubts that therapy could be effective with a child as young as 2 years old, but my chatty boy is my daily proof that it does indeed work.
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