Speech Eval Jon

This morning Jon completed all 3 parts of the CHW Child Development evaluation. Today was with the speech pathologist and an audiologist for a hearing test. The hearing test went great. No problems there, wasn't expecting any though. Andy could not tolerate that booth where they did the test for nonverbal kids. Jon loved it. The SLP was the same one that evaluated Eric in 2005, just before Andy was born. It's nice having all that history and knowing how the process works. That made this appointment go much faster. We got in the room and immediately he went after a ring stacker. He was lining up the rings, not stacking them. But he was approaching both other adults in the room besides me. His eye contact was on. He was babbling away, said a few words. He was initiating interaction, and was letting the SLP handle the toys he was playing with. She said he was giving her clear messages with facial expressions, like when he wanted her to stop messing with the blocks he was playing with. While she was doing her testing it was amazing how much he could do. He responds to his name, the command come here. He can distinguish tone of voice and reacts appropriately. He is doing some imitating of sounds, songs that he hears regularly. With that, his results still show significant delays. He's in the 10-12 month range across the board. This really stinks. But, he is showing the pattern of speech development in children. He is heading in the right direction, even though he was very behind. This is very encouraging. If he was a one year old he would be doing very well and on track to talking soon. Whereas with Eric, his scores were all over the board showing no pattern, no direction. He's shown he is very responsive to singing and music. It was suggested I pick out 5 things that are important to him. Keep saying the word to him, linking the object to the word. Make up songs so it's fun and he remembers it. Once he can get that, he can expand more.

So now it's 3 for 3 saying they don't think Jon is autistic. At first, I wanted to believe that, but didn't. How could the very inappropriate play with toys and the unusual interactions with people be explained. Normally he gets so upset if someone tries to disturb his play, and gets very possessive with toys. Sometimes he is not as responsive and it seems he is in his own world. Eric and Andy's therapists have asked if I was going for more extensive autism testing and the lead said that their organization would most likely be working with Jon too. They know what they are talking about right? They are experts in this field, but this is their business and of course you want to bring it in. He shown some of his aimless running and wandering today, as he did in the waiting room for both other appointments and some with the psychologist. Nobody thought much of it. He is much more interested in people than his brothers ever were. He makes good eye contact much of the time. He is making much more of an effort to talk and be sociable than Eric or Andy did at this age. The way it was explained to me today made me feel more confident. I feel that I can hold on to this encouraging news, with very little question. Maybe it's just me needing to let go of the stress, but I feel lighter now. The plan is to see how he does once he starts school in the fall. Continue with the suggestions of this SLP, EIP and the school district to keep him on track. If there are issues that come up, or the signs become more apparent I will pursue further evaluation at that point.