So ever since Bea was about 18 months old, I began to notice that she didn't have a lot of words. I didn't think a whole lot of it, but as time went on I became more and more concerned. She was a chatter box, it was just hard to tell what she was saying. I would talk to Dave about it, and him being the "non-worrier" that he is would always say, "She's fine, she'll get it!". So I kept listening to him and although I have seen that she has made a lot of progress, she is still seemed a little behind. (Oh, and I AM a worrier! :)
I finally started to look into getting her tested around September or October of last year. Since she was about to turn 3, I was told that it needed to be with the school system. I had to fill out a big questionnaire and once I completed it, they told me that they probably wouldn't meet with her until the beginning of January. Nice and super frustrating. Waiting another 3 months seemed like a long time. So, finally at the end of January, she had a meeting with the early learning center here in Bountiful, and... she had NOTHING to do with it! She would not cooperate with any of the women, so they weren't able to determine her abilities. Therefore, they decided that they would have her meet with the speech therapist from Valley View Elementary (the school that Bea will go to when she goes to kindergarten) So, another 2 months go by and I finally had to call to see where we were with the whole process. Her paperwork had gotten lost in the shuffle and nothing had been done. Geez. So, finally, over the past month, Bea has met a couple of times with the therapist and she completed all of her testing. She loved it! She thought it was so much fun. She thought she was going to "school" and thought she was quite the big girl. Very cute. She actually ended up testing really well! Her scores were all in the "average" range. Obviously average is not what you usually aspire to and, although average doesn't sound totally great, I was very happy with the results. It tested articulation and word recognition. The problem is, she has more issues with sentence structure. The speech therapist recognized this and made a recommendation for her to be involved in a program called "Talking Time". It will be with 4 other children and their parents and I guess they are going to help us learn skills to improve her speech.
An additional part of this testing was getting her hearing testing. I took her yesterday and she scored low! I was in shock! The audiologist thought she had an ear infection because inside her ears was red. He recommended antibiotic therapy and then retesting a month or so after to see if it changes her results. He was 95% sure that would, so we will see!
