We had the meeting yesterday to see about speech therapy for Gage. The process we went through was kind of interesting - they tested all of his skills, not just verbal skills. The testing went very well too, although it took Gage a while to warm up to the women doing the testing.

After we were done, of course, he started turning on the charm and flirting with them, showing none of the shyness he’d shownd during the tests.

These were all pretty simple tests. The one we had the most trouble getting him to do was stacking the blocks. This was one of the first things they tried, and we didn’t have any success with him handling the blocks until I asked him to put them on his workbench. Then he was willing to make the stack they needed to see. Did it really well too, getting all 10 blocks stacked without it falling over. 6 was the minimum for his age range. He even adjusted when he saw it getting ready to fall after the 8th block.

One of the easiest tests to get him to do was jumping. We just had Ariel jump first. Very easy for him to be comfortable with that, and it let her let out some steam after sitting very quietly so that he could show what he knows. So hard for a 5 year old to not call out the answers.

As I expected, he was ahead on many physical activities, performing in the 3 year old range. He’s always been ahead of schedule in that area, walking at 9.5 months, stringing small beads at 18 months. I just about laughed when the examiners pulled out the big wooden beads and string for him to do. Just so easy for him.

But of course he didn’t talk much to them, so sometimes they had to rely on my reporting of what he could do. Very hard to assess what a child can say when they’re too shy to talk. But they were pleased at how well he could point out pictures and his understanding of how some things were used… at least when he felt like cooperating in those areas.

They only help out in areas that a child is at least 25% behind schedule in. There were a couple areas he was not quite that far behind in, and they are probably associated with the areas he was further behind in. Rather hard to demonstrate certain social skills without speech.

So they’ll be setting us up shortly. This program only goes to age 3, then they help us transition to preschool programs through the school. That should be interesting, since that’s only about 7.5 months away. We’ll have to see how fast he progresses once we have help.

I had one person comment on my previous post about this that sometimes schools try to keep speech therapy students in the developmentally disabled classes. That of course gave me pause for thought. Fortunately, I know of two girls in my daughter’s preschool class last year who went through this same program. Guess what. They’re in the regular classes. I’m pretty sure my school district won’t be messing us up that way.

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