2

Two...soon to be three - the number of meetings we have had with ECI (Early Childhood Intervention) so far. While we get excited about every new word that Ian says or signs every month, we (especially me haha) have been very aware that his word acquisition isn't anywhere close to most of his peers. In fact, his monthly speech updates remind me of those of his little friends who are a full year younger than he is. After going back and forth, we decided to call ECI and at least have Ian evaluated.

I have to say, calling them and getting the process started has given me so much peace of mind! The ladies are great and I feel so much better having other professionals in our corner watching out for Ian. The speech therapist came out today with our ECI coordinator and they did his speech evalv. His results at age 26 months came out to be:

* Adaptive (self-dressing, feeding, etc): 16 months
* Cognitive: 17 months (mostly because he doesn't actually point to the pictures in books yet)
* Fine/Gross Motor: 24 months
* Language Expressive: 14 months
* Language Receptive: 14 months (I need to ask on this...it may because of the picture pointing thing...he actually has really good receptive skills!)
* Personal/Social: 19 months (largely due to the fact he hasn't shown much comforting skill yet when someone is upset)

We will see the speech therapist and coordinator again on Thursday and will get a list of his speech goals then. In the meantime, the ones I remember include:

* Working on carrying out two and three step directions (i.e. Go to the table and get your cup.)
* Identifying body parts (they suggested using bath time to practice this...Give me your foot to wash!)
* And a few others that I can't remember right now!

Overall, I think Ian tested pretty close to where he is (except for receptive). It is a relief to know where we are at and that I am not just being an over-concerned parent with unrealistically high expectations.

Ian felt very comfortable with both ladies, which I am really glad that he does! He even crawled up in the coordinator's lap and she said I could take a picture.

I'm curious to see how the first speech session will go on Thursday!