Julia with Ms. Trish at her last speech therapy session. This was not her last therapy session because she is changing therapists, but because she has achieved all her speech goals. She is speaking like a normal little four-year-old should be speaking. This includes both pronunciation, but also vocabulary and appropriate language processing. We are so pleased and so is her therapist. Apparently this is unusual for a child to reach this goal and graduate out. This is Julia’s success and to get there we have Ms. Patty and Ms. Trish to thank. As we thanked them personally, we are grateful for this gift that they have given Julia that she can now share with everyone!

Julia is our transportation girl. If there is a train or plane near us, she is pointing it out to us. On our last day at Dollywood, she found a helicopter in the sky over the park. After pointing it out to Mama, Mama thought it would be a good idea to let her practice saying the word. I said it slowly, in my own southern accent, and broken into syllables “say He-lo-cop-ter”. Did she repeat the word? No, she turned and looked back up at it and waved. She had heard me tell her to “say hello (to the) copter”.

Ms. Patty with Julia – Julia loves to take her stuffed chicken finger puppet named Bawck Bawck with her

Julia has been going to therapy since April and has shown a lot of improvement. She loves her therapist Ms. Patty. Our weekly sessions are early morning and despite being a little on the groggy side, Julia has kept her excitement and joy of going. Their sessions involve speech games and exercises intermixed with good ‘ole play. When she arrives for her hour session she gets to pick a toy from the toy cabinet. She doesn’t pick the same toy each time, but they tend to be playhouses with fun people and characters.

From not making a two syllable sound and not talking in conversation, Julia now is working on harder sounds of h and blended s sounds. She is willing to perk up and make statements that involve two or more words in conversation. I’m sure we have had improvement because of developmental stages, but the increase in speech has been magnified by her hard work with Ms. Patty.

When Julia turned three she was old enough for the local school system to assist with her speech development. Julia is able to meet with a speech therapist at the local preschool on a weekly basis. Because of going to a private speech therapist and having the ongoing performance tracking and assessments, enrolling Julia in the additional school program was really easy.

Julia has loved meeting with Ms. Trish for her thirty minute weekly session. We can see such an improvement in Julia’s speech with the addition of this second session over the last few weeks. It has been a joy to take Julia to her appointments. Emily hangs out with Mama during the preschool therapy sessions and we work on pre-kindergarten activities.

When we enrolled Julia in her preschool therapy we talked about the long term therapy requirements for Julia. Ms. Trish said that by the time Julia starts Kindergarten she would no longer require speech. She thought in a year we would see her speaking equal to her peers. What great news for Julia!

Julia loves being a big girl and going into the Preschool and she and Emily love to run up and down the stairs in front of the building.

Ms. Trish with Julia – once again Bawck Bawck makes the photo.

Mama made strawberry milkshakes from the last of our summer strawberries as an evening treat. The girls were playing after a bath and when Julia heard the blender running she came to investigate. “Wha dat?” and “For Me?” were her first questions. She talked non-stop for a while trying to figure out what all the noise was for. She seemed to have an opinion about everything including what cup she wanted to drink from. Who knew that all we had to do to get her to talk was to make milkshakes? They were yummy!

Julia’s week started out with at trip the hospital to have her tongue clipped. Emily went to play at a friend’s house so Julia had the attention of both her parents. Julia was unsure of everything that she saw, not surprising for one of our cautious girls. She did warm up after she got used to seeing people in hats. They gave her “silly juice” to help her with saying good-bye to Mommy and Daddy and to make her memories foggy of the time. Julia disliked the effects of the silly juice. She kept trying to control things that she couldn’t control. She ended up being pretty upset over it. She refused to wear her gown and kept pulling at it until we just took it off. While she couldn’t control much, at least we could grant her control over the wearing of the gown. When it was her turn she went back with a few tears, but then that was expected too. The procedure was very quick and the doctor felt that she would be feeling back to normal in 2-3 days. She had a few stitches that would need to heal and would have some swelling. When we got to go back to see her after the procedure she was upset. She had woken and not found a face she knew. They had rockers in recovery and we got to rock and cuddle for a while. She only threw up once while we were there, and after she had settled and was back in her jammies, we were released to go home. She fought a nap most of the way home, but gave in and took a great nap. The rest of the day she was a little off because of the medications, but by the next day she was running around like usual.

Then, today we went for Julia’s speech assessment. Julia liked the idea of playing games, but got tired of the ‘performance’ aspect of the assessment. With a little bribery she got thru it, although it took the whole time. The general assessment of her speech is that she is pretty far behind. The therapist said that the fact that she doesn’t say the middle and ending sounds of words is a tough thing for them to learn if they don’t start off saying them. It is like she is missing association of the rest of the sound to the word. She said it will take lots of repetition and practice of making sounds that she doesn’t already make. Although on a good note, she seemed very bright and would be able to learn them. It will take a few weeks for us to get a set therapy schedule, but looking forward to seeing Julia be challenged and grow in this area.

Julia – the girl of a thousand faces!

Julia visited the ENT today. She warmed up to the doctor and even gave him a high-five after a while of playing and talking. He said her level of being tongue-tied is moderate, and while it was our option of treatment, he thought she would benefit from the surgery. It is to be short and simple, but will require a trip to the hospital because of her age. We will schedule this for the middle of April.

They did a hearing test on Julia to eliminate that as an issue for her. She was a bit distracted during a portion of the test and they will re-test her the next time we go in on that portion, but from the results they did get, she does not seem to have any hearing issues.

The doctor agreed that Julia needed to have speech therapy and was pleased that she was going to get some. He felt that she would improve quickly with her speech. Mostly, he suggested that we just make her talk for things on a daily basis. That seems like such a simple thing, but at our house who would ever think you would need to make someone talk. I guess she is just making her own unique spot in our family. Time will tell a lot, but I’m so excited to see the voice that she is discovering.