NYR 6-14-11 - sayonara speech

Mac got the official all-clear from his speech therapist today and we are all ever-so-happy about this.

Mac started speech therapy last year at Pinewood because his teacher noticed he had a problem with "s" sounds. Sometimes they came out as more of a "sh" sound and not a clean "s" sound. (I blame this on the fact that as he was cementing his English vocabulary at a young age, he was also learning Brazilian Portuguese which has a heavy emphasis on "sh" sounds, and I was sure he'd outgrow it in due time.)

Mac participated in group speech therapy once or twice a week in 1st grade, and I have to tell you that I saw absolutely no improvement whatsoever. But because he'd received speech therapy and had an IEP that recommended continued therapy - and because I was honest on the medical clearance form for the State Department - he was given a lower medical clearance than what we always get and I was told he'd have to continue speech therapy or be discharged by an embassy-vetted therapist to regain the top clearance.

I sat on this for the first 6 months we were here because he really balked at the idea of more therapy. I felt like he had enough changes and adapting to do without adding therapy to the mix.

At his well-child check-up in January, I discussed therapy with the embassy doctor who referred us to a wonderful American therapist whose husband works at the embassy. She was just starting to take new patients and she agreed to do his evaluation.

She and Mac hit it off right away because it turns out she's from South Carolina AND her family pulls for the Gamecocks. Mac was sold.

During the initial evaluation, she identified the issue immediately in a way that had never been verbalized to us. He was diagnosed with a production issue of /s/ and /z/ phonemes in "multisyllabic words with the target phonemes in all positions of these words (initial, medial and final and consonant clusters)".

(Do you like how official that looks? In her reports, the speech therapist always puts the "s" and the "z" between those brackets and I really like how medical and official and speech therapy-ish it looks.)

The great thing for us as parents was that we knew exactly what the problem was. It wasn't every "s" or "z" that he pronounced - which we knew from listening to him in conversation. It was more often words like butterscotch and Shakespeare that threw his pronunciation off.

By the time we met for our post-initial evaluation meeting, she had already researched different programs that would specifically help with these letters. She instilled confidence that this was readily treatable and she gave us hope that if we worked hard, we'd be done sooner rather than later.

Mac really likes her and doesn't mind the therapy, which has just been for 30 minutes once a week. What he minds is that those 30 minutes fall during the first half of his lunch/recess break. So while he's in therapy, his friends are eating and by the time he gets out of therapy, they're on the playground and he's in the cafeteria. This causes serious drama in an 8 year-old's world.

I may not be the tiger mother with the violin, but the tiger comes out when it comes to getting my boy out of speech therapy. We religiously did the homework she sent home each week and if we heard the "slushy s or z" sound in conversation, we asked him to repeat the word again.

So it was with great relief and tremendous happiness and celebration that she discharged him today. She made him sign a contract that we'd work for 20 minutes a day four times a week on directed speech exercise - we can play games, he can read out loud, discuss a movie, etc. - and we have to correct any slushy sounds we hear. He has to do that until October and if he doesn't, per the contract, speech therapy "will resume at CGB during lunchtime on Tuesdays". She's clever, that speech therapist, because she knows how much he dislikes being there during lunch.

For Mac being discharged from speech therapy, I am sooooooo grateful!!