School

Ethan is going to a speech therapist at the hospital, and it is going nicely. I wish the sessions were longer than a half hour once a week, but it's better than nothing. The tharapist pointed out a real problem that is probably the main reason for Ethans speech delay, his tongue muscles are not developed, so he has trouble using his tongue. He could only stick it out as long as it was resting on his bottom lip, he couldn't lift it up or move it around freely. It's nice to finally have an idea of what he was struggling with, so we are doing different things to help him practice moving his tongue around and its working. He can say more words now than I can list, and he's saying full sentences occasionally now. I am in the process of registering him for school, and I'm very happy that their program sounds better than the last school we were at. This school has certified speech therapists who come once a week, and then they have techs who work more often with the children, and the techs are supervised by the certified speech therapists, plus the techs have to go to training twice a month. Last year, the week before school ended, the girl who was Ethan's speech therapist mentioned that she was not certified, she just had experience. I was upset that for a whole year he had only worked with her for speech therapy, which explained why he had barely progressed in speech. She was nice, but Ethan needed real speech therapists to help him. I'm very ready for him to be in school again, it's hard to keep him occupied by myself all day, plus I will be able to do things while he is away at school that are hard to do when he is with me, such as paint or maybe find a part time job to help out with finances. We will see.