Everyone has noticed how Elijah is talking more. I think it is a matter of him gaining confidence in his expanding vocabulary. At Sunday school last weekend, his teachers commented to him, “You’re talking!” He is still very shy in new places, and since Sunday School is only a weekly place he goes, he’s still very quiet there. So, his talking last Sunday was probably more a product of it being Daddy’s week to help with his group, but they have his number now! :)
He is still very difficult to understand, as he has trouble making many sounds. We had his ears and hearing tested last week, and all was fine there. So as we suspected, we think it is a matter of him just not being able to make the sounds. He didn’t talk much at all, before he came home at ages 3 1/2, so we think he’s still working on developing those muscles and learning how to move his mouth to make certain sounds.
We continue to work with him, as does daycare – by asking him to repeat words one-at-a-time, trying to say them the right way. Sometimes even showing him how to position his lips/tongue - funny how you don't realize just how complex speaking is until you try to teach someone. I think it is helping, but he still has quite a ways to go. We have an appointment coming up with a speech therapist so hopefully they can confirm this and can get him some specialized help as well. This is a free service provided by the state’s Area Education Agency – their philosophy with their early childhood programs is to help the kids as soon as they know there is an issue that can be fixed – and then hopefully by the time they go to school it will be back to normal and not cause further delays in their education.
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When Ty was about that age and not talking, we cut pictures out of magazines and if he could say them, we pasted them in a spiral book and that was his word book. We used a lot of toy pictures from the Christmas catalogue. Every day we say the words he knew and add new ones he could say. For a long time there was only four or five words but then when he saw how I added them he worked really hard to be able to glue more in the notebook.
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