Aaron Update

As we approach Aaron's 3rd birthday, I find myself overly worrying about what could happen. There is no doubt that he will qualify for speech services, it's just a matter of us making usre he gets all the servcies he needs. There is a chance that he'll qualify for preschool, but that will depend on if they have room, if they feel his speech delay is large enough and if Jon and I feel that the preschool class is a good fit.

Part of his school evaluation, was Jon or I filling out an assessment. They gave us 5 pages of skills to ask him to do and we'd mark if he could always do it, not do it at all or sometimes do it. The other day, I sat down with Aaron to fill out the assessment. At the end, I was amazed at his scores. Going just based on could he do them or not, he scored always do it on all excpt 4 questions. But, I had to make note on almost 10 of them, that while he can give the correct response, others wouldn't be able to understand him.

That's where his speech gets funny. I've been asking people "can you understand Aaron?" and without skipping a beat everyone says "Yes, we know what Aaron is saying." and then I clarify with "can you understand him verbally?" and they pause, think about it and say "no, we can't understand most of the words that he says."

But, he has the amazing ability to get his point across or say something that he knows is the right word. For example, if you ask point to superman and ask him who it is, he'll pretend to fly, while making the noise of a plane. If you point to superman and ask him who he is, he'll pretend to climb. If you ask him how old Kate is, he'll hold up and show you 0. If you ask him his name, he'll tell you "uhrn whawore" You know he's saying Aaron Wadsworth because you just asked him what his name is.

He also has a lot of "code" words for words he can't say. Grace is ee (with a weird sound in front making it sound almost like the letter g), Christopher is ee uh, Kate is baby, downstairs is bum, bum, bum (but he can say done), jacket is brrr, drink is cup or sipping sound, ice cream is a licking sound, all animals are the animal sounds (except pig).

That's not to say that he doesn't verbally talk--he does and more and more he's picking up words and saying them clearly--it's just that it's hard to figure out how much others understand because he uses other means to communicate.

One of my favorite conversation he has had was with one our our Early Intevention workers. She asked Aaron if he played on teh computer at playgroup and he said "yes (emphasis on the s--haha). She asked if he had a computer at home. He said
"yes, ee bum, bum, bum. ee uh, bum, bum, bum. daddy, bum, bum, bum." He was answering her question and she knew he was answering her question, but she had no idea what he meant (she did know bum, bum, bum meant downstairs based on previous evaluation mmeetings with him).

my other favorite conversation was one I overheard the other day. Kate was laying on the ground and babbling. It was a somewhat high pitched "aaahhhhh" and he ran up to her leaned over and said "no, baby, me Uhren."

Whatever the next couple of months bring and as intimidating it seems to have to decide what is best for Aaron, I know that he can communicate and as a family we are all learning to communicate better.