A new update!

I can not say how much I love Idaho's early intervention, they have been completely amazing!

We are still doing in home therapy with the speech therapist, and he has improved by leaps and bounds! When we first started he was speaking at a <1 year old scale, now we are at an 20 month old's vocabulary and his behavior has changed completely. I can actually have mini conversations with him between his talking and sign language. He loves when his therapist Nessa is over and she is really growing on me too. Idaho just changed so all therapy has to be "the coaching method" so most of the time she is here she is showing me what to do and how to help improve his speech throughout the week. I in turn show Nayt. It is amazing how much I didn't know about teaching him to speak. It's so easy to forget that he doesn't know what things are.

He also started his first day of pre- preschool through the program this morning! His first day of school. :'( Anyways, he did great! I wasn't sure how leaving him would be but he took one look at the train set and didn't care about me anymore. At school he is getting an hour of speech therapy with Nessa, an hour of development therapy with our case worker, Megan, who I adore, and 30 minutes of behavior therapy. He also gets to play with other 2 1/2 year olds in the program. They get to sing, do crafts and have a snack. He was pooped when I picked him up.

They are confident that they can get us pre-qualified in May for the school districts early development preschool, based on his speech alone. They want to check out his hearing in a couple of months again, and we are going to get an evaluation with the behavioral therapist in the future if some of his anger/frustration/interaction things don't improve in "school". He has been biting his hand when he gets angry now, and they have some concerns over his frustration =pain mentality.

As for me, I am finally over the fact that my son is delayed and have let go of (most) of the guilt. I still find myself saying "But he is really smart" at the end of any conversation about therapy. Because he really is. He isn't stupid, he is just delayed. There is a difference. And I know that, I just still feel the need to clarify to people who don't really know Drew. I know I don't need to defend him to others, but hearing kids on the playground saying he is stupid is tough.

The other issue I have is so many people think they know about childhood development. Just because you worked in a preschool does not make you an expert. I took a few childhood development classes and am I mom but I don't know squat. I am learning to just smile and nod when people give me advice and take i with a grain of salt. Don't get me wrong, I have asked my teacher friends and mom things, but that is because they have a degree in early development. But it gets annoying, even though I know people are doing it to help.