This morning Sarah-the-speech-therapist came around to assess Small’s progress. We know he is making astounding progress – this is a child who was to all intents and purposes non verbal at the start of this year, who now has a vocabulary I wouldn’t dream of trying to count, and who structures long sentences (I counted one of 11 words the other day). There are still some sounds he struggles with however, and I just wanted someone to check that they are the sounds children generally struggle with at this stage, so she popped out.
She came with a box of toys as usual, and Small was very happy to see her. They did jigsaws and Small proved that he understands all his colours and can sequence activities. He wasn’t very impressed with the silly jigsaw that had the crocodile going on a bus or in a boat, but we reached a compromise in the end 😉 Then she got out a couple of South Tyneside Assessment of Syntactic Structures (STASS) books, and went through them with him.
There are some sounds that come and go, but it appears that for other ppl they are coming more than they are going, iyswim. And when she got on to the second book, she didn’t write anything down – it’s all to do with sentences, understanding, prepositions and so on, and there was nothing he struggled with. He’s gone from a child one year ago that the health visitor was quite happy to refer for speech and therapy, to a child talking and understanding hugely above his age – now there’s a surprise 😉
And that’s probably the last time we’ll see Sarah-t-s-t. She’s considering emigrating, early next year. I hope she has a wonderful life in her new world – she’s been a great help to us.
So that’s Small to a t. Shouldn’t have surprised us, as that’s how he did walking. Or didn’t. He took about 3 steps at Kessingland when he was about 13 months old, then didn’t walk again for at least another month, and never did the toddling wobbling thing. He still doesn’t sound as clear as Big did, but I’d guess he’s got at least the vocabulary she had at this kind of age, and he’s started to keep up a running commentary while he’s playing the imaginary games that are coming through as well. He’s taken to building things with lego (proper lego, not duplo) and he tells us what they are and then they have wonderful adventures. Tonight he built a crocodile with roller skates 🙂
Now there’s a wonderful blog post title if ever there was one.
t-bird says
Lovely.
Ron says
Sarah didn’t walk until 16 months. Meaghan went from almost non-verbal to full sentences in a very short period of time. Good news on the end of Sarah-t-s-t.