Jackanese Update

Jack has had a veritable word/sentence explosion lately -- unfortunately it is still fairly difficult to understand. So with a little help from my visiting teachers (both of whom have had children with the same types of problems) I was able to contact a childhood development center that could help Jack. They came to the house and played with Jack for about an hour to evaluate his cognitive/motor/language abilities. They were so great with him! He had a ball playing with them, showing off, and really trying to mimic everything they said and did. It was so cute to watch him have such a fun time. They just loved him and kept saying what a doll he was. In fact, they ended up staying and playing with him about twice as long and they usually do because they were having so much fun with him. :)

At the end of the session one of the therapists said he is SO smart. Cognitively and in terms of fine and gross motor skills he is way above his peers, but he is just having difficulty with articulation. I had basically thought the same thing, but it was good to hear from a professional. She referred him to an articulation therapist at Cassia Regional Hospital in Burley. We will be going there for an evaluation tomorrow morning and then should be able to start therapy very soon. It will be so good for him to have something intensive to help fix this problem before it becomes an issue for him. He's just getting to the age where he's starting to be frustrated that I can't understand everything he says. I think if I ignore this problem he'll become a very unhappy/unpleasant little boy. A lot of behavior problems in children come from frustrations about learning or communication difficulties.

I'll update after our appointment tomorrow.