Speech Therapy

With the holidays and all there was a lot going on. But Cooper starting something new that we are pretty excited about and so far he is doing so great.  He starting getting some speech therapy once a week. Its with a program called First Steps. A speech therapist comes to our house once a week to work with him for a hour.

Its funny how little I knew of anything when I first became a parent. I guess what I mean is there is just so much to learn. About everything. About babies, about milestones. And developmental stuff. Your always learning something new. I felt really clueless when we had Cooper. Being the youngest myself and not really being around many babies lately. Being the first of my friends to have a baby. I just mean that there was so much to learn and figure out.

Ok, back to my main point.. anyway we have been doing the Parents as Teachers program with Cooper since he was fairly young. Which by the way we were partnered with an awesome educator. She was with us at our old house. And luckily our new house was still within her boundaries. My point is months ago, she expressed some concern about Cooper's lack of talking. That she thought compared to other kids his age, he was not really saying many words. Well he wasn't really saying much at all. Since he is our first and I don't work with kids I hadn't really thought about it. He was so smart and understands everything you say. I just figured he wasn't quite ready yet. So months went by and she kept expressing concern, saying if it doesn't change by a certain point that she would recommend checking into speech therapy. I guess my first reaction was well I guess a little disappointed, not dissappointed in Cooper but rather in Joe and myself. Like maybe we had failed him somehow. Maybe because he wasn't around other kids enough. Which by the way none of our friends really had kids. The ones that do, live miles away. Or maybe he was missing out on important skills by not being in a daycare situation. We must be doing something wrong, right? I felt really down about it at first. Then after a while I 'snapped' out of it and was like well we need to get this checked out. We need to make sure its not something else. Like a hearing issue. We need to check into some options. Our PAT educator suggested First Steps. So we got the ball rolling...

We met with them (by the way), this was last year when we lived with Diana. We went through a lengthly evaulation and testing to see if Cooper would qualify for the program. Well he was just a few points to high on the test for them to except him. Which was kind of a bummer. But I figured well I guess that is kinda good news. We'll just keep working with him and in his own time it will come. Months went by... we bought our new house... and enough time had passed that we could re-apply and have him retested. He hadn't shown hardly any progress as far as new words, etc. This was probably in Nov. And this time they took him. I was really excited to have a way to get him a little bit of help.

I know some people are like oh well he'll talk eventually. He probably won't shut up. He is just a late talker. Just wait it out. I heard a few comments like that. And that's ok. And I'm sure its partly true. And that is what I thought at first.. and as the months went by, I thought well I just don't want to sit back and not do anything. I guess though like they say when you become a parent, a mom - you just have to go with your gut feeling. And for me I thought I want to make sure we are making every effort to help him. And if this just gives him a little jump start to speaking that its totally worth it.

So he had his first therapy session the week before Christmas. And he did great! He loves his teacher Sally (speech therapist). She gave us some great 'tools' and suggestions of how we can work with him. Since he has had three more sessions. And already in a such a short period of time, he has quite a few new words and sounds. He is even attempting two-three word phrases. Its really quite awesome. Maybe its freak timing. Or maybe he just needed a little push. Either way it doesn't really matter. I'm so thankful that now a days there are so many things offered out there. Just like Parents as Teachers, which I had never heard of when we first had Cooper. It has been a great resource. He loves his PAT educator too. She always brings great toys and activities and fun ideas for us to try. And just like that fell into place so did the speech therapy. God had this program fall into our lap. And the right teacher (therapist) fall into place.

So far we are having a really positive experience. And I can't wait to see Cooper progress in the coming months. He is such a smart little guy. And its just fun to see him growing and learning and doing such a good job!