Speech Regression

In the back of my mind for the past couple weeks, I have been noticing that Finn has stopped saying new words. Yesterday, after reading an article about Regressive Autism (something I didn't even know existed) it struck me full in the face that not only was Finn not saying any new words, but he wasn't saying any of his old words either. Suddenly, alarm sirens were going off in my head and I was on high alert, scrutinizing Finn's every sound and action. I haven't felt this anxious about my son's well-being since he was a newborn.
After about a day and a half I calmed down enough to realize that Finn was not showing any signs of autism or regression in any other areas of his development. It seems to be limited to his verbal abilities. Ben and I agreed that the responsible thing to do was call the doctor, even if that meant someone telling us we were crazy, over-concerned parents. She told us to call the local early intervention program, which I did and got bumped around to several different departments until I was finally able to leave a voice mail for someone to call me back.  It was the longest voice mail greeting I had ever sat through. They wanted me to leave so much information, I had to take notes! They never called back, so I'm thinking that after I got done giving all our names, spellings, dates of birth, address, favorite colors and shoe sizes, I forgot to leave my phone number. This wouldn't surprise me at all. I think I'm now at that level of sleep-deprivation that causes permanent brain damage.  So after waiting a couple weeks (during which time I tried to talk myself out of it, but my sense of responsibility nagged at me) I called again and remembered to leave my phone number and got a call back that very day. I was able to set up an appointment to have a couple therapists to come for a home visit to evaluate Finn. It was probably best for Finn to be in his home environment to get the best evaluation, but it meant an awful lot of work for me in the cleaning department. Its generally all I can do to keep up with the superficial housework that needs to be done for us not to drown in a sea of dirty dishes, laundry and crumbs. I doubted I'd get the opportunity to explain to the evaluators that I'm just trying to strengthen my child's immune system one mold spore and dust bunny at a time, so I neglected Finn for a couple days and deep cleaned until I was dead on my feet!

The evaluation went well in that Finn was very charming and engaging and scored at or above his age level on nearly all the assessments. But with speech he demonstrated a 50% delay in verbal ability. To put it in perspective the therapist told me that in reasoning, problem-solving,

and language comprehension he is functioning at a 2 1/2 year old level. But in his verbal ability he is at a ten-month old level. The evaluators reassured me that he shows no signs of autism and even did an extended autism evaluation just to be thorough. 

 

So as relieved as Ben and I are that Finn is developing normally in nearly all areas, we're still feeling the heavy weight of this speech delay. I don't think either of us expected it to be that bad. Unfortunately, its left us with more questions than answers, the worst of which for me is, "Why?" I am the one staying home and raising this child, if this delay is caused by something lacking in his home environment, then I am at fault. I feel like I need to know if there was something more I should have been doing or if this is just the way Finn is and even if we had worked with flash cards and I had overcome my introverted nature and talked incessantly to him all day and banned all screen time and let him cry-it-out so that he got 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night, he would still have been delayed in his verbal skills. I just don't know, and it bothers me.

According to the early intervention paperwork I received, children under 24 months that show a 33% delay in one area of development will qualify for services. Now we have to wait to hear from our case manager to find out what the next step is. I am assuming (and hoping) that it will be a more in-depth evaluation that will determine why he isn't talking. And once we know what's going on, they can refer us to the appropriate therapist. I haven't done much online research on speech issues yet, since I don't know what I'm looking for, but what little I have seen suggests that speech issues are among the easiest to correct when caught early. It is reassuring to know that we took the appropriate steps early on, and hopefully in a few years we'll wonder how we ever worried that he didn't talk enough!