The Expected and the Unexpected

The Expected and Hoped For news of the summer: Tyson's cleft appointments went great! 1. He passed his hearing test in audiology. 2. The ENT on the team no longer needs to see him. 3. The speech pathologist said articulation is great, with a few areas to work on. 4. Lip surgery when we are ready to fix the other part of the bilateral cleft lip. The Unexpected... The speech pathologist agreed with the school's determination that something more might be going on with Tyson. She said research showed that kids adopted internationally like Ty should be caught up into normal conversation by 2 years. Ty's been home 3 years. So rather than waiting for the school to do language and cognitive testing this fall, I took him to the speech therapist we saw last summer. First of course, we had to have a doctor referral, which was no problem since Tyson had a healthy child visit in early July. So the big day came, and at 8:30 we saw "Teacher Judy" who Tyson remembers fondly because he always got a prize! In 60 minutes she did two evaluations. She agreed that articulation is not a concern at this time (with a cleft child, that is amazing!). His language usage was at the 23rd %ile...low-normal range, but not low enough for speech services. That's where the good news stopped. Then she got into another test, where he scored in the 3rd %ile, and it showed an issue with auditory processing. Tyson was burned out, so we left and came back that afternoon to do another test for auditory processing just to see where he would score--4th %ile. So now we are exploring issues with auditory processing, and the research I've done has helped me find some strategies for daily life. It explains A LOT! We won't give up. We'll keep at it, and hopefully this knowledge will help give us more insight how to best help our little man. Jolene