NU Speech Clinic Meets My Expectations
I was secretly hoping it would be all over. But, we need to go back.
Yesterday we arrived just on time for our speech therapy session at NU. Linda, our therapist, and her 5 person entourage greeted us at the doors of the school. What a nice touch! Instantly, she came across as warm, engaging and really interested in our son. We quickly went into a clinical room filled with lots of toys and props. Before we knew it, Cole was being video tapped, questioned, talked with and played with.
What I didn’t expect was some of the IQ benchmarking. I guess it is intuitive that they need to make certain he is developmentally at the right stage, but it wasn’t clear to me at the time. They began to ask Cole lots of logic questions and reductive reasoning questions. His answers blew me away. I was so impressed and proud of him.
But, I could not believe we were going to do this for 4 hours. Well, we didn’t. About mid way through Cole figured out what was going on. Pretty funny, actually. He just started randomly answering their questions (without trying) just to get them to stop and give him the toys he wanted to play with. I recall a moment where the therapist gave Cole a spoon, cup, bowl and teddy bear. She then asked Cole to give her the cup and then feed the bear some food. Cole told her “No, actually, the bear needs the cup because he is a little thirsty.” He was changing the rules on her.
We all started laughing and realized that a 4 hour session isn’t appropriate for a kid his age. So, we are scheduled to go back next week for round 2. Then, he will be observed again and a report/assessment will be given to us. Ahhhh…. Another week.
All in all, I feel really happy that I went… even if I don’t have any answers yet. I liked Linda. I think she was a wise choice and had already made a pretty spot-on assessment of Cole while we were there. She used 2 words that nearly every person uses that knows him—SMART and SWEET. She too told us she was impressed with his language skills. “Well, actually, Linda” put her over the edge with laughter! He puts us over the edge with laughter daily. It was nice to see that yesterday was no exception.
p.s. I went to go see the German film "The Lives of Others" --- no, not with my son. It won best foreign film this past weekend. If you haven't seen it, it is definitely worth a watch. Really well done.
3 comments:
In retrospect I know we didn't laugh enough with our kids. Trying to blend a family was so much work. I love that he makes everyone laugh. We now have Hanna whose job it is to make everyone smile and everyone does.
I'm glad your day went well with Cole. I'll have to check out that movie. jo
A four hour evaluation for a little boy? I can't believe he was compliant for as long as he was. It sounds like he did really well.
I agree that four hours is a bit much. As a martial arts instructor, we tried a class of 3-5 year olds, but the three year olds just couldn't concentrate that long. Even with the 4 and 5 year olds, the 30 mins. is too long sometimes for them, and when they transfer to the 45 min. long class, they're constantly asking after 30 mins. if they're done yet. Many time, we see that it comes down to their own interaction with their parents, and their expectations, so if Cole was able to withstand two hours, that speaks highly of your relationship with him.
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