She Speaketh

Anna has been having Early Intervention sessions for her speech for three months now, so I thought I'd give an update.

Judy comes every other week and plays for about 45 minutes. Obviously Anna loves her! She brings puzzles, books, blocks, crayons, and other toys that are very interactive so she can encourage Anna to use words to indicate what she wants and so on. Mostly I think she's training me to interact this way.

Anna has made a lot of progress. When she was first tested I made a list of words she said consistently without prompting and it was maybe 50. About a month ago I listed a bunch more. This time before Judy came I made another list, and I was amazed how long it was. I didn't count, but it might have been 50 more, and she's putting together more phrases.

In the last couple weeks she has really gotten into using people's names. She can identify and say several colors, a bunch of letters, and of course her favorite condiments. She can count to ten.

It's amazing what you can learn when you start talking, eh?

Next visit Judy is going to do a mini re-evaluation of Anna's language development to see how her scores now compare to her first test. Normally they wouldn't do this until a couple months before she turns three, at which point she enters a different phase of the EI program, but since we're moving, this will give us some sense of her progress.

I plan to contact the Michigan program, and I'm sure they'll want to do their own evaluation. Their system appears to be similar, so if she still needs help when she turns three, she might be able to go into a group learning situation, like a focused preschool program, which I think would be good for her since she's not getting that social aspect much now. We'll see.