Tackling a Challenge

Zane got his speech assessed last week and finally on Thursday I found out the results of the assessment. The results were very good news/bad news. The good news is that although he does have significant speech sound delays, they are not in any way affecting him academically or socially.

Zane is incredibly social, has lots of friends at school, is a leader in his class and is thriving in about every way imaginable for kindergarten. This is all extremely good news! However, because there is no link between his speech issues and his ability to succeed in school, Zane does not qualify for school speech therapy. This is bad news. Especially since the speech pathologist feels it is highly unlikely he will ever correct the speech sound issues that he has on his own without intervention.

Melonie (the speech pathologist at the school) said she would be willing to have Zane and I come in and work with her once a month. I jumped on that possibility and yesterday we had our first meeting. I can not even begin to describe how impressed I was with Zane's willingness to work on his speech sounds. He was able (with instruction) make almost every speech sound that he was missing at least independently. Including the always difficult "R" sound. We were sent home a packet of practice sheets and instructions to keep on working. Our next meeting with Melonie is in January. Hopefully we will have some good progress to show. 

We are also going to go forward with private therapy as well. I know we will have insurance to cover the service through June so we will hit that hard while we have the chance. So proud of my boy. And a wee bit nervous for me as I have to be the one to keep him honest during our practice times to ensure he is making the sounds properly.