A friend sent me the link to this post about speech delays. It hit really close to home. As I read her words, I saw W and tears ran down my cheeks. We go through these exact situations day in and day out. It's painful, it's frustrating, and it's enough to make me want to scream.
W's go-to words are "peeese" and "halp." Those two words can mean anything and everything. And they often do. Trying to figure out what any particular "peeese"/"halp" combination means, exactly, takes a good deal of time and patience. And, sadly I (and to a lesser extent, B) am the only one who really knows what he's talking about most of the time. Which just increases his reliance on me at a time when he's supposed to be growing more and more independent. It's infuriating.
We've had him in speech therapy for a couple of months, and he's definitely making improvements. Which is wonderful and crappy at the same time. It's only crappy because we haven't been able to get him evaluated for our state's early intervention program yet, and I'm afraid that he's not going to qualify without the speech delay. As much as I don't want him in the program because I don't want the "special needs" label, I would love for him to have access to more services that our insurance will cover/we can afford. When our 15 visits for the year are done, we won't be able to keep him in his therapies unless we get into this program. It really sucks that our health insurance has found one more way to screw us over. And we have good insurance! I'm half tempted to avoid speech therapy appointments until we've gotten the eval, but I'm not sure it would make any difference.
So we wait. Hoping for improvement. Hoping - mostly secretly - for enough problems to get him the help he really needs. Hoping for the day when his frustrated, insistent "halp" gives way to the incessant toddler chatter I know he's got trapped inside.
W's go-to words are "peeese" and "halp." Those two words can mean anything and everything. And they often do. Trying to figure out what any particular "peeese"/"halp" combination means, exactly, takes a good deal of time and patience. And, sadly I (and to a lesser extent, B) am the only one who really knows what he's talking about most of the time. Which just increases his reliance on me at a time when he's supposed to be growing more and more independent. It's infuriating.
We've had him in speech therapy for a couple of months, and he's definitely making improvements. Which is wonderful and crappy at the same time. It's only crappy because we haven't been able to get him evaluated for our state's early intervention program yet, and I'm afraid that he's not going to qualify without the speech delay. As much as I don't want him in the program because I don't want the "special needs" label, I would love for him to have access to more services that our insurance will cover/we can afford. When our 15 visits for the year are done, we won't be able to keep him in his therapies unless we get into this program. It really sucks that our health insurance has found one more way to screw us over. And we have good insurance! I'm half tempted to avoid speech therapy appointments until we've gotten the eval, but I'm not sure it would make any difference.
So we wait. Hoping for improvement. Hoping - mostly secretly - for enough problems to get him the help he really needs. Hoping for the day when his frustrated, insistent "halp" gives way to the incessant toddler chatter I know he's got trapped inside.
2 comments:
I really hope W can get into the program. I can't wait for the day when you complain that he talks your ear off!
I immediately took advantage of the Help Me Grow program and it is wonderful. Just an FYI, if you do decided to call them I wouldn't pay for an eval out of pocket just yet as Help Me Grow will do their own.
Good Luck!
Post a Comment