Bad, Unobservant Mom

The beauty of this blog is that I have two people that read this. I feel like I can journal my heart out and it can go pretty much undetected. So, please allow me to beat myself up a bit and then pour out my heart.

Belle, my sweet baby, is growing up. It's hard at times to come to grips with the fact that she is not a baby and that since she is my last, I won't do the baby thing again. Bittersweet. So that said, when she started talking a bit later than big sister, I didn't give it much thought. The baby talk began and it was so stinkin' cute. We mimicked her and didn't call too much attention to trying to correct her. Over the past year I have changed my ways and have started to help her talk more like a big girl. I thought that her issues were, in fact, non-issues, just normal speech development that would resolve itself in time. Hubby and I discussed it on many occasions, but always came to the agreement that she is such a smart child that it would be fine. When we started school this fall at home, and I have to thank the Lord that maybe this was His whole reason not to answer our prayers and have a Pre-K at school this year, I realized that there were sounds that she could not make even when I tried coaching her through it. The week that we were doing the letter S, Sandy Sunfish, and she could not, though she tried so hard, make the S sound properly. I called up her ped and made an appointment for later that week. We were referred to a speech therapist and went for the evaluation last week. Belle tested very well, above average in most categories, for language development. Her vocabulary is right on track, if not a tad higher, for her age group. But she scored as having a severe phonological disorder. Severe. I felt like the wind was knocked out of me. Severe. I didn't hear much after that word came out of the therapist's mouth. When I pulled my thoughts together, I had her recap for me, taking notes furiously. She was so kind and very positive. I had told her before the testing that I wasn't sure if she had issues or not, but we were still having trouble understanding her at times and thought we'd be better safe than sorry. She told me she thought we hard work that the problem could be corrected in 9-12 months with 2 sessions a week for a little while and getting down to one as soon as possible. On the drive home, I fought tears. I feel like I knew there was a problem a long time ago and passed it off as age appropriate. Hubby and I had time to sit down the next morning and go over what the therapist said and we both agreed to sacrifice to make this happen. One of the things we discussed at length was to not make Belle feel different or uneasy about what was going on. I have approached the whole thing by telling her that Miss Sarrah is going to help her talk so that people won't have to ask her to repeat herself. Belle seems good with the whole thing, taking it in stride and not being too effected.

Today was our first session with Miss Sarrah. When we got into the car after an hour of her being out of my sight and parenting (this was very hard for me!!) she didn't want to talk about what she did or what was taught. I knew from Sarrah that they had worked on the "s" sound. It took a bit of riding and bribery with hot chocolate from Tim Hortons, before she opened up to tell me. She sounded like she didn't mind it too much and that she had a good time. The therapist was young and pretty and got right down on Belle's level when she came out to meet her for the first time.

It is all about perspective though. Hubby says, hey, she has a speech problem, it's not cancer. Wow. Talk about perspective. I'm thankful that finally I took her for an eval and that we are working on correcting this, even though I'm a bit mad at myself. But thinking that this is something that will be over and done with in a year and not something like cancer was just what I needed to get my brain straight! So next Tuesday morning we'll head back over to see Miss Sarrah thankful all the way that my kiddo is not sick. And knowing that I'm one lucky momma.