Gregory's Speech Update

As most of you know, Gregory hasn't started talking yet. We had him evaluated last year with the excellent Minnesota school systems, and they determined that he has great cognitive skills and his understanding of language is near the 98th percentile. However he can only say a few simple syllables (like mama, dada, ha). His speech therapist suspects he has a condition called childhood apraxia, which makes it difficult for children to organize their "speaking muscles" to vocalize. He tries super hard to talk but often simply can't say even simple syllables from one day to the next. Here's one good website that describes more, and here's another one.

He has started attending a preschool for children with apraxia. He loves that kind of environment -- lots of fun stuff to do and kids to play with -- so he is doing well there. And we are already noticing him verbalizing more often. And he loves the bus! On the other hand, I found it suprisingly hard to watch my little two year old get on the bus by himself.



One great benefit of the preschool is that they will teach him language for his basic needs, like "mine" and "no". Those are the two words parents dread to hear, but now I realize how important they are for kids his age. He is starting to be stressed by interactions with his peers because he can't fend for himself without these words. His teachers tell us that the willful and stubborn behavior that he occasionally demonstrates are typical with kids like him who have so much to say and can't express themselves. We are hoping to learn from them how to deal with these issues.

Despite not being able to talk, Gregory does quite well using signs and motions to talk. Here is an example of one of our typical "conversations". He's a little fussy in this video, although fussy sounds are, unfortunately, some of the sounds that he uses to get his point across.



With patience on our part, and some speech therapy and work on his part, Gregory speech will be just fine.