Hearing and Speech Evaluation- How It Went!

On Monday, Jackson and I went for his hearing and formal speech/language evaluation. He again rose at about 5 AM (he's been getting up between 4:45 and 6:00 AM for the past two weeks- hope this is just temporary!), so I was a little worried about his mood and willingness to cooperate by the time his appointment rolled around. Luckily, I had nothing to worry about. Jackson was thrilled to be there, and to see everyone! It's very much a playful environment, and everyone has lots of experience working with young children and putting them at ease, so no surprise there!

First, he had his audiology exam, which he found hilarious! They play different tones on both sides from speakers in an audio exam booth, and there are also light-up boxes filled with animals and little drums (that's what Jackson found hysterical). His hearing was adequate for all speech, but they did recommend a retest in 6 months (there were a couple of tones on the lowest frequency to which he wouldn't localize a couple of times- but who knows if that was just due to a toddler attention span :)).

Next- the speech/language evaluation. This took a long time, but Jackson had a great time! It was basically lots of questions for me, and lots of playing and interaction for Jackson. That little flirt was even demanding to have his feet stroked by the end of the exam by the coordinator (he loves that!). His social interaction and other areas of communication (joint attention, etc.) were found to be major strengths. However, his expressive language (his actual speech) was found to be significantly delayed- again, he wouldn't say any of the few things that he does say, or perform on cue during the eval. His receptive language (his ability to understand speech/language) was very mildly delayed, but nearly normal (again- they said this might have been due to his attention span). At any rate, no surprises to us. Jackson will begin speech therapy 1x/week for 45 minutes at a time- which will consist of playing and interaction in our home- basically to get him to talk. I'm pretty certain he'll love it, and it's much better to address the significant delay now rather than later. They also recommended for us to keep doing what we're doing- sign language, etc. (the sign language has caused a major communication breakthrough for us in the past 5 weeks or so!). He's up to using about 7 signs, and says the word with them at times. He's repeating words more consistently, and using a few on his own, which is very encouraging! His overall verbalization has increased big time, which is great, and his babble sounds a little more sophisticated, if that makes sense (more jargon-y)! Progress is definitely being made, just slowly.

Oh- Jackson wanted me to tell you that he has a new favorite TV show- Sportscenter on ESPN. He laughs, smiles, and claps for all the highlights, and signs for "more" when it goes to commercial!