We Have a Combiner on Our Hands!

M had a follow up assessment at the speech therapy clinic this morning and they were so pleased!

At our SLPs urging, we've skipped the current block of therapy that is one-on-one (well, two) between therapist & child/parent for a specialized course built by The Hanen Centre for parents only. It's based on a well known book called It Takes Two to Talk and the course basically breaks it down in detail and provides parents with the insight & skills to work with their toddler. On the one hand, it's been informative and very comforting to know there are lots of other slow-to-speak kids out there. On the other hand, it's pretty much been a repeat of what we learned (just without knowing or labeling it) during our one-on-one sessions.

Who cares!? It's working! M is a combiner!

There are four basic stages of early communication & language:

• Discovers - Reactionary but do not communicate with purpose.
• Communicators - Nonverbal in nature.
• First Word Users - Single word use.
• Combiners - Combine 2-3 words into sentences.

M is actually past the combiner stage because he will use 4-5 words in a sentence. The SLP was happy to note that he uses I and I'm and only uses "me" to refer to himself the odd time. She noticed how he was so much more engaged during play and looked for opportunities to chat, take turns and in general, communicate. Yay!

A lot of people have asked if I felt we started this process too early with M. I'm sure they wonder if we jumped the gun and went through all of this when it may not have been necessary. Truth be told, we'll never really know but I am so glad we listened to our doctor at his 1 year appointment when she said to get him on the waiting list. She saw that he wasn't talking or babbling at all and we were beginning to catch on to it, too. It was the one milestone he consistently wasn't hitting. We were lucky to start seeing an SLP when M was 18 months and at that time, he was a communicator. He's made a tonne of progress over the last 6 months and I'm positive it's because of all the great tips & tricks we received.

I'm so proud of my little guy! His vocabulary is growing and he wants to repeat. He actually wants to look at and talk to us! He's like this tiny little person attempting to have an intelligent conversation. It's amazing! Go M go!