Language Update

Last week Joshua had another home visit with his Early On interventionist. She is very happy with his progress, as are we! He has gone from about 8 words in December to 60 now! He is also doing a lot more imitating and trying new words. I am still concerned about his lack of vocabulary (around 2 they should have a vocabulary of 200 words), lack of 2 word utterances, and lack of ability to transfer beginning consonant sounds from from words he knows to new words (for example, he knows mommy, moon, mail but says boo instead of moo). The interventionist is only really concerned with the lack of 2 word utterances at this point. She did however suggest that a speech pathologist from Early On come and see Joshua to give us another perspective. I was thrilled because my thoughts have always been, the more eyes/input on a child the better!

So the speech pathologist came this morning. She said Joshua may be slightly behind in language, but is not in need of any special services. She said that the range of words in a 2 year olds vocabulary is form 50 to 200 words, so Joshua is in that normal range - just at the low end. The other insightful thing she told me was that children usually begin to speak in 2 word utterances when they have a vocabulary of about 50 words. She said he should start using more 2 word utterances soon now that his vocabulary has expanded. At this point an the Early On interventionist will continue to come twice month. If no progress has been made by the end of the summer we will have the speech pathologist return to do an assessment. This fall Joshua will probably be joining a "Chatterbox" group run by Early On. So, for now we just keep working with Joshua as we have and hopefully he will continue to make progress!