A mother's guilt

A few months ago at Grant's school (read: daycare), a prominent school for deaf children in our area offered speech screenings for $20.  It seemed like a good idea, better to know now than not, right?  We never in a million years thought there was an issue.  A week later we received the results -- DID NOT PASS.  What? He didn't pass so I called the pathologist who did the screening for further informaiton, he has major articulation issues and needs the full evaluation, that will be $150 please, self-pay, and thank you.  

We thought "Grant-ese" was cute, not a problem! 

Appearantly there are certain sounds he should have mastered by now.  Brandon and I discussed it and decided we would discuss further with our peditrician at his 3 year old well child in 6 weeks or so.  In the meantime, we figured out it was more when he was trying to put full sentences together, the one-two word combos were easy to translate.  The peditrician agreed he has articulation issues but clearly has a large vocabulary, Grant happened to be extra chatty the day we were there.  I booked the full evaluation the next week.

What a disaster!

The test was a cognitive test calibrated for 3-8 years old.  Hello?  He turned 3 a mere two weeks before.  Some of the questions we are not sure Parker (at 6) could have answered.   We totally expected say eeee,  ahhhh, oooo,   ewwww, etc.   We got show me the small cat.   What is this a picture of?  Which boy is dry?  and my absolute favorite to our 3 year old ... she read him a story and asked him to remember certain things .. Like what did Mom (from the story, not me) say?  Reading comprehension for a 3 year old!  Seriously.  If he could pass this test, we would have been calling Mensa, not the school for the deaf.   Again .. serioulsy.

Let's not forgot they expected our 3 year old to wear headphones and raise his hand when he heard a tone.  Ummm, hello, he's 3!  And when he wouldn't cooperate, she asked us if we thought he could hear.  Sure, he responds to us and noises so yeah, he can hear.*

Brandon and I left the evaluation feeling completely defeated and wondering what they expected from him.  After stewing and stewing about it, I asked Brandon what he thought about getting an ENT evaluation too?  Parker already has an ENT that I see sometimes too as he was my ENT when I was a kid so I called my favorite nurse there and left a voice mail about the above experience.  She called me back and agreed it seemed rediculous, she got us in that afternoon with their best audiologist and the ENT even though Grant was a new patient, Parker and I are not. 

ENT 101
Let's see if he has fluid .. yep!
Is there an obstruction .. yep!
So I held my baby boy down while the ENT tortured removed the obstruction.  I'll spare you the gross details.  The ENT talked to me afterwards and said there is NO WAY he can hear properly with the amount of fluid in his ears, he has so much fluid they could not get accurate hearing test results.  He said tubes and 3 months would make Grant a new child!  While he might still need some speech therapy, most of his issues would be cleared up when he can hear us.

*We are parents, not professionials

Of course, we feel like horrible parents for NOT knowing there was an issue.  Grant has had 4 ear infections in his life!  The school for the deaf was all set to sign him up for speech therapy, twice a week, self-pay.  I have always held this school in the highest regard, they do amazing things with deaf children teaching them how to talk so how could they be 'the man'?  

On the bright side, we now know what the issue is and it's so fixable!  Parker is on her 2nd set of tubes plus 2 cleft lip surgeries, Grant had a minor surgery at 12 weeks to remove a skin tag he was born with.  We couldn't be more at ease with surgery for tubes.  Surgery is 12/3 so by March, we expect to see big changes in his articulation.