ped appointment/speech/weight - Page 2

[smeisnotapirate]

Yeah, a crying momma would make any doctor do eval tests. Don't worry!

[Girlprof]

We are in early intervention for our daughter for gross motor but in CT, they evaluate everything whenever they evaluate anything.

Don't be too worried (impossible, I know). You'll know a lot more after the evaluation. Speech is a lot more than how many words - a speech therapist or language pathologist will ask about and observe all kinds of communication: signs, pointing, emotional expressions, etc. If your daughter qualifies for therapy (which is a big if), it's likely to be really helpful. Our daughter just adores her physical therapist and she's been super super helpful. All therapy that we've had is play based. Really, at this age, the babies won't do it if it isn't fun so it's up to the therapist to figure out how to make things fun.

One tip that I wish we had had. If you don't like your birth-to-three person or agency (assuming you get one), you can ask for a different one. The first agency that we worked with was horrible. They didn't even do the evaluation correctly. For example, they were required to send two people to the eval, but only one came and she was a social worker. They canceled stuff. The scheduling was a disaster. But, we said we wanted to change and the new agency and our therapist have been totally excellent!

And, yeah, a crying mom would probably get our ped to refer us for an evaluation too. But there's absolutely no harm in getting this checked out.

[mamadelbosque]

I certainly wouldn't worry about speech at 15 months. DS had zero words at that age. He had all of 2 or 3 around 20 months. At 24 months-ish he exploded - within a couple months he was in full sentences - to the point that the teacher of our playgroup didn't see him for a couple months over the summer and the next time she saw him he said 'more pudding please' and she didn't know who it was - cause' she'd never heard him say *ANYTHING* before!! And this was at the local MRDD school - and yet nobody ever mentioned early intervention to me.

[Letitia]

From my experience, I think you're doing the right thing pursuing the eval for her speech if you are concerned. My daughter was followed developmentally from birth because she was high-risk for delays, and ended up starting speech therapy around 14months. As others have said, if your daughter qualifies for the therapy, it's play-based and fun for the child. I never saw any way it was something that could be harming my daughter. Sure, there are lots of kids who talk later than the average and are fine, but there are also kids like my nephew who talk later and are not fine. I don't think I'll ever know if things would have turned out as well as they have if we hadn't done it, but it's not something I regret or second guess.

[mommy2maya]

I think it is very unhelpful for people to dismiss a mother's concern for slow speech development. I don't think many people realize that the EARLIER the intervention, the better the outcome overall. PLEASE, if you are concerned AT ALL about your child's developmental progress, PLEASE call your local Early Intervention office for an evaluation. It can be PRICELESS in the development of your child.

[ShyDaisi]

I didn't really get the feeling that people are dismissing her concerns...more like, if you want to get the evaluation, by all means, do so, but to also realize it is entirely possible that it isn't SLOW speech development, just at his own pace (which is what the pediatrician said too...)

[sapphire_chan]

Yeah, it can feed into concerns to have a doctor say there's a problem too, so it can be helpful to know that a doctor will, on occasion, make a recommendation purely out of respect for a parent's concerns and not because there's any huge red flag.

A "better safe than sorry" evaluation is a lot less stressful.