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@sorrycharlie: is your ped concerned?

I remember reading somewhere how it should progress

ex:

age 2 - 25% of what your LO should be understood by a stranger

Age 3 - 50%

Age 4 - 75%

or something along those lines

We've not been through this but my pediatrician told us at her 2 year appointment that by that point at least 50% of her speech should be understood by a stranger. So it sounds like you did the right thing in calling. There's no harm in just getting her evaluated and seeing where she stands.

@sorrycharlie: it doesn't hurt to get an EI evaluation but I will add that DH sometimes cant understand our 4yr old...... no one is concerned

@sorrycharlie: my mom understands him the most after us, then my dad and then ILs. I say all four of them understand at least 50-75% of the time, the times they don't is usually when he's using the opposite language!

I think my friends + brother probably understand him around 50% on average across all conversation. Sometimes more, sometimes less depending on the context of what they're "discussing."

We do! It is a fantastic thing! After 2 months of speech therapy, Cam has had amazing progress!

So at Thanksgiving my MIL brought it up when C was almost 3- so we had just aged out of EI, but we qualified through the local school district. I didn't really feel there was much wrong, he's slower verbally, but being my oldest I had no idea how far behind he was.

We went to a morning evaluation in February, they tested his hearing and sight, then gave him a battery of skill demonstrations (put the bear under the cup, where did the bear go and pointing to pictures and saying the words, sorting things with similar characteristics) and he immediately qualified for the program in March after their spring break. We took him in for an additional evaluation at the school where we met with the lead speech therapist and the lead special ed teacher, he qualified with speech and we met one more time to go through the results and his Individualized Education Program. So we get free preschool!

He technically shouldn't start pre-school until this fall, but they wanted to get him started ASAP, so we took him 3 mornings a week for the last 2 months of school. His teachers are special ed teachers and he works with the speech therapist once a week. He only has 12 students total in class, so he gets a lot of individualized attention. His class is a mix of a few students with major delays, most with mild delays, a few ESL students, and a few student mentors. Just in two months I can't even tell you the progress we have seen. He hit a verbal explosion recently (almost 3.5), whether he would have anyway- I'm sure it's much larger than had he not been in school. He was very ready to go to school and this is the perfect opportunity for him.

It was stressful for me to settle into the idea of, I had some bummer days accepting it (Mrs.CG was such a help with this I can't thank her enough), but now on the other end of it, I'm so glad that I made the call to get him checked out.

Feel free to ask me anything or PM me. I'll happily give you my # if you want to talk

@lemondrop: it was hard for me to accept. I still struggle with my emotions when I get some mail for her from the special education department. But it is a fantastic program and I'm so grateful for it.

I knew at 18 months, my kid had a problem. The only symptom was pronunciation. At 3 he was finally diagnosed as apraxia. No one believed me. At 3 I said he wasn't understood and then everyone jumped into action (he had been in therapy for 5 months already). A year later with intensive therapy he is almost age normative.

It never hurts to do the testing. He wouldn't have qualified for ei so we always did private therapy.

My kid gets EI, including speech therapy, and it's been a game changer for us! I could go on and on forever on the benefits of EI.

The only thing is, check the requirements for your state but usually a kid ages out at 3. Once you get EI situated you could be aged out.

@sorrycharlie: N is using speech services between speech therapy and EI services. It has been a serious game changer for us. We are starting E on speech therapy very soon. He is already in EI.

@sorrycharlie: A lot of different people watch our LO and although I think he's speech is very good, even they don't understand a lot of what he says. I think your gut on LO's speech is probably the most important. I agree that it doesn't hurt to get an eval, but at the same time, they'll probably point to the chart above.

You could also look at specific speech sounds that kids should be capable of at each age. That might make it easier to evaluate whether there is an issue.