So Kizzy just had her speech evaluation and I could just cry. The only test they had was to evaluate how Kizzy says individual words. Example: Kizzy would repeat words like duck, dress, bathtub, toothbrush, tree, zebra, jammies, cookie, cracker, puzzle, etc. That was it. That was the test. On their bell curve of where she would qualify for speech therapy she was a fraction of a percentage above. Meaning, that of kids who DON'T need speech therapy she is at the very very bottom of the curve. On top of that my concern is not at all whether or not Kizzy can repeat specific words. She can. The few things she mispronounces are things such as "bafftub" or "cwayon". Not a big deal. The problem lies in when she's talking to people. Out of a ten word sentence all the words she says are so slurred together that you can maybe pick out 4 key words. Enough to structure what she was saying, but unless you are really trying to focus on understanding her, most people have to ask her to repeat herself. Sometimes she repeats what she said 5 or 6 times before they either finally get it, or ask me to interpret. I find I have to interpret about 90% of what she says to people in the community. 80% to her own grandmother and 50% to her own daddy! With that comes a great deal of frustration for her and for me. She has thrown herself on her bed sobbing because Grandpa didn't understand her. If heaven forbid I'm struggling to understand something it is the END of the world, because I'm the only one who consistantly understands without asking her to repeat. Can you imagine how frustrating your life would be if literally every word that came out of your mouth people asked you to repeat?Not just once or twice but multiple times? And add on top of that there are some people who I shall not name, but those close to me can certainly make a wild guess who, they don't even try. They blow off anything she says to them. They've even gone so far as to make fun of how she pronounced her sentence. I feel like she sometimes doesn't try to articulate because she knows that people will just ask me what she said, so it's like a crutch to her. At the same time, I'm not sure how to help her communicate with others unless there IS an interpreter for her. People who spend alot of time with toddlers tend to understand her better than those who don't. But at the same time the only difference between her speech and Kendal's is that Kizzy's sentence structures are more complex. Which that doesn't do her a whole lot of good when her sentence is so slurred together that people don't understand her.
I told the Speech Therapist today that my concern is NOT if she can make certain sounds, or if she can parrot words. My concern is that people don't understand my daughter. I hear 2 and 3 year olds that are more clear than her. Communicating is HARD. I'm certain it effects HER comprehension too. The only thing the speech lady could do was reccommend a second evaluation done by a different speech therapist for a second opinion, because the ONLY test they had was to see if she could pronounce specific sounds or not. My opinion on that- how dumb. Speech is so much more complex than just sounds. What about articulations, sentence structure, and so on? The fact of the matter is Kizzy can prounounce every single sound in the english language. The few individual words that come out wrong are very very typical for her age. But when she talks, telling stories, asking questions, communicating with others in general, people do not understand her. Even the speech therapist a few times had to say "what? OH! you said your brother. Ok." Someone who's entire career is helping kids with speech problems and she had to take pause. She had to ask, "what?" and then she could piece it together. So no, I didn't interpret, but she still didn't understand right away. She still had to take a moment to put it together.
So, there is my rant. There is my frustration. It's off my chest and now we'll just have to wait for the next eval.
