Our Late Talker

One of the primary reasons I decided it was time to start a blog was so that we could track Michael's progress. At about 18 months (he is now 28 months) Michael was classified as a "late talker." At that point he was still social enough to rule out concerns of something more serious.

Finally, at 26 months following about a month of attempting to force him to use words we have seen him use in the past we decided it was time we had someone take a closer look. We started with having his ears tested. The test at this point was hearing in a room with speakers. The result was although his hearing may not be 100% it is not "bad enough to be contributing to late speech."

We moved onto the next step which was having him evaluated by Birth-to-three. Fortunately, or not so fortunately he qualified for services. Since our meeting on 8/31 we have outlined services he will recieve, completed an extended m-chat and scheduled a more in-depth evaluation to either rule in or rule out autism.  All-in-all it is a stressful experience so far and nothing makes you feel like worse of a parent through this exercise.  It makes you question everything:

• Did we wait too long and miss signs that we should have been pursuing earlier?
• Are we not pushing to have his hearing evaluated to truly rule it out?
• Are we sure it isn't food intolerances?
• Am I just not singing enough nursey rhymes or reading enough?
• Did I eat something during his pregnancy I shouldn't have?
• Did we introduce Gabby too quickly?

The list goes on-and-on-and-on. My head spins with so many questions throughout everyday and unfortunately there is just no answer at this point.