I feel right now like my brain has to wrap itself around too many things. In addition to all the gifted-related issues with C like his testing through the school district or trying to adjust to his new school where they didn’t quite welcome him into first grade, little Z started speech therapy today. Their evaluation last week listed his speech to be around 20 months (4 months delayed), but “within normal limits”. It makes me wonder exactly what normal is. Maybe it’s anything less than the 25% delay required by early intervention? I guess a 17% delay isn’t significant, but the therapist pointed out that the pattern of Z’s speech was unusual.
Unlike most kids who leave off the ending sounds from their words, Z often leaves off the beginning sounds. This issue, which I Googled myself after the session, is apparantly called initial consonant deletion and is atypical. It made me think back to when Z was evaluated by early intervention in June. At the time, he said few words and many were difficult to understand. Still, they said he was fine. They did point out that it was unusual that he said “aw” for ball instead of “ba”, but at the time there weren’t enough words to really see a pattern. They didn’t seem concerned, though. Tonight I went through my list of nearly 100 words I’ve heard Z use in the past couple weeks and noted that over 40% followed that pattern of initial consonant deletion.
So what does this mean? Well, I’ve been able to find out that there are many developmentally normal phonological processes. These only become an issue if a child continues with them after a certain age. However, some processes like initial consonant deletion are not developmentally normal. Ok, that is about where I hit a dead end. There is hardly any information out there on initial consonant deletion! Almost everything is about the typical final consonant deletion. Some sites group them together, but I at least read enough to know that they shouldn’t be lumped together like that. I’m wondering now if I should call early intervention again. This problem wouldn’t indicate a 25% delay, because it’s never age appropriate. What do they do then? I would hope they’d offer services, but I don’t know. I’d love for Z to have free speech therapy.
I wonder, though, whether even an atypical problem like this can resolve itself. Z has added some initial sounds on slowly. He does actually say “baw” now for ball and tonight for the first time said “nunny” for bunny (which is an acceptable substitution rather than just dropping off the beginning sound). Maybe the 40% will dwindle down on its own, or maybe his private speech therapy (for as long as we can afford it) will be enough. I guess either way, I should call early intervention and see how they handle issues like this. I won’t be surprised, though, if they say again that he doesn’t qualify.
