Now, though, it's gotten to the point that we're frustrated with him not being able to tell us when something bothers him or telling us what he wants. He is also getting very frustrated with not being able to tell us and this often results in him crying, screaming and having full on tantrums.
We were contacted by Early Intervention letting us know that they were going to come out and evaluate Thorin and that he had to have a significant delay for them to accept him into the program. A speech therapist, a child psychologist and child development specialist came to "play" with Thorin back in May and were impressed with him in every area but expressive speech. He scored on target or above target for motor skills (gross and fine) and comprehension but for expressive speech he scored at an 8 month level. That definitely was a huge delay and he was accepted into the program with no questions.
Since he started the program we've had a speech therapist come every week to the house and work with him. We also go to group sessions every week for him to play with kids his age who also have speech issues. This has really been a big help with introducing sign language and reinforcing the use of signing. It's helped him realize he can use his hands to get his point across and slightly eased the frustration level.
He's made slight progress with speech and we are still not sure the root of the problem. We have been referred to an Occupational Therapist, a doctor who specializes in Child Development and an audiologist at UMASS. We still have yet to have his hearing thoroughly tested but have been told by many specialist that this needs to happen. He obviously can hear but the question is whether he is hearing everything. I have wondered this a little bit lately since it almost seems the noises and words he says sometimes reminds me of how a deaf person talks, just slightly off because that's how they hear it.
The other possibility is he has something called "Apraxia." This is where the speech center in the brain is disconnected from the motor center of the brain. So the brain knows what it wants to say but doesn't know how to say it. If this is the issue he'll just need to figure out another way to train his brain to make the sounds he wants. This will result in him having to really think about what he wants to say and how to say it and a lot of patience on our part.
The strange part of all this is he doesn't use the left side of his mouth very much. The OT had come to see him last week to check him out and make sure there weren't other issues going on with him. She concluded what everyone else has, that he's on target or above the target age for motor skills and that there is no left sided weakness anywhere on his body except his mouth. She suggested that we do anything we can to stimulate his left side....electric toothbrush on the inside and outside of his cheek, warm and cold washcloths, putting crackers on his left side so he's forced to chew on that side or use his tongue to get it over to the right. He's really taken to the electric toothbrush because of course I went out and got him a Thomas the Tank Engine one which he calls "Mroom Mroom." He's also started to make a few more sounds that use the tongue, especially "lalalalalalala"
After today's session his therapist proposed we have her come twice a week. Thorin's been making progress but it has been pretty slow. So this means now 3x's a week we'll be doing some sort of therapy with him and hopefully it will make more of a difference. We also may have to bring him to Waltham to a program run by Boston's Childrens Hospital which does more intensive therapy with children who have significant speech delays and also apraxia. At the end of July we will finally have his hearing checked and that will hopefully give us more answers or at least cross another thing off the list.
