My youngest son has speech therapy sessions twice a week, an hour each session. As a mother, it’s hard to come face to face with any and everything that your child may be struggling with. It was a little after his second birthday that my husband casually asked me if our son has difficulty speaking. I didn’t put to much thought into it at the time, actually I was a little annoyed with the question, “there was nothing wrong with my son!” After a few months went by, I would start paying more attention to other children his age and they were all speaking words that my son wasn’t close to saying. It was his 2 year check up and the doctor had me answer those little questionnaires that they give you at their check ups, at that moment, my stomach started turning because I realized I couldn’t check anything off in the speech section. I then thought back to the question my husband asked me, maybe our son does have trouble with speech. After coming to face with the issue, I became very worried; I started thinking about everything. Would if our son is deaf, would if he is never able to speak, how am I as a mother going to get our family to learn sign language…. I mean, the worse case scenarios, that pertained to this particular situation were running through my head. Also, at birth, he failed his hearing test and I was told to bring him back a week later for another test because he could have failed due to fluid in his ears. When I brought him back for his second hearing test, the nurse couldn’t get a passing reading. I remember my eyes filling up with water and just looking at my husband. The nurse asked me to try and breast feed him while she tried to relax him, finally there was a passing reading and my heart smiled the biggest smile ever. But, now later dealing with this, I thought back to this and questioned whether or not it was a true pass. Naturally…… I started googling!!! P.S. Googling is never really the best idea when it comes to health. Becoming more knowledgeable is key, by all means, but seeking professional help is my best advice.

While in the car, I would make loud noises to see if he would acknowledge them, he did about 50 percent of the time. I would make myself feel better by telling myself, “he’s still a baby, his attention span is small,” and that was actually fact, so I wasn’t really lying to myself. I would play music to see if he’d dance to the beat and while at home, I would turn the TV louder than I normally would to see if there was any changes in him. After doing this for a while, I started to notice him moving to the rhythm and getting into certain songs over others. At this point, I wasn’t as concerned with his hearing.

After speaking with his doctor, I was advised to look into speech therapy, so of course, I immediately did. I came across a Valley-Mountain Regional Center (VMRC), who was happy to help me with my son. I will be honest, I am not entirely educated with VMRC’s full potential with any of their other services or programs that they provide. With the speech aspect, I will say it was pretty smooth and the process moved along rather quickly with a couple steps involved. I reached out to them via telephone and from that point made an appointment to start my application process. Once my application was reviewed and processed, I was told to bring Liam in for a personal evaluation. The evaluation and the tests that were involved determined what needs needed to be met to get my son to where he should be. After all the paper work was reviewed and signed, it was determined that my son needed a minimum of one hour a session, twice a week with a speech therapist. VMRC provided my son services by having two different speech therapists visiting us in the comfort of our home, each therapists once a week for an hour. VMRC, by certain obligations, does have to terminate services after my son turns three, from that point forward, if needed, I will have to get further help through the county school district. VMRC excepts most health insurances, (not entirely sure on the full extent to which ones they except) and if for any reason your health insurance doesn’t cover speech, VMRC will help cover what your insurance won’t. Honestly, from my personal experience, they have been a great deal of help and their therapists have been wonderful! {The VMRC location we used is located in Modesto Ca.}

My son is going to be three years old at the end of this month and will now be nearing the end of his services. I will say that his speech has come a long way; I don’t know for certain if it was entirely because of the speech sessions or if it was just giving him the time that he needed to excel on his own; I will say that the speech sessions were of a great deal of help either way and he had a lot of fun with it.

In the beginning, prior to all of of this, I had a lot of people sharing their thoughts with me on how they felt or what they thought when it came to my son and his speech, family members and close friends that is. Some told me to give him time and that it will come naturally, others thought therapy was a good idea. As a mother, I believed that he would eventually speak fluently, but as a precaution and doing everything on my end to make sure it happened, I went with speech therapy. I felt that some people thought of speech therapy as something to maybe be ashamed of or possibly frond upon because it was a disability; I assure you, speech therapy, or ANY therapy for that matter is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. I know that when you first started to read this, I had stated that I thought to my self, “there’s nothing wrong with my son,” I was foolish to see it as something wrong with him. If my son had anything serious with his speech that needed special attention, that didn’t mean that there was something wrong with him, per se, it just meant that there is something wrong in general, based on what’s considered to be normal. Many people are born with different stories, different circumstances, disabilities, different disadvantages and advantages; how we react or work with them defines the outcome.

I will say that Liam is talking more and more everyday. I don’t believe he is where most other children his age are, but know that with time, he will be. It’s hard, because with Liam not being my first child, I had three others to compare him to, which is definitely not recommended. Naturally, I would compare him to others, even after telling myself, “every child is different and learns at different levels,” I couldn’t help it. But even with the internal fight with myself, I am here to tell you that you really shouldn’t allow that part of you who self consciously tells you to compare your child to others, win. Every child is different and will learn at different paces. Also, time cures a lot!!! Give your child time to develop to where he or she is meant to be; you’re their mother and instinctively knows whats best for them, seek help if you feel it necessary or are questioning something in regards to your child; it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

I am not a doctor or by any means someone with a health related degree to give out any facts or solid information in regards to speech. I do have some personal experience, though, with my own child having speech sessions, so if you have any inquiries in regards to my story, I am most happy to help with what little I have personally learned. As always, I hope that you took something from this piece of reading and have a great day!!!