Language Language Language

Sometimes I hesitate to write too much about James and his challenges but it's a huge part of our life right now. We're learning and growing together. We have bad days and good days.

Yesterday we had an evaluation at the OU Children's Study Center. It was 4 hours of tests and 2 hours of family meeting.

In a nutshell, James has a severe expressive language disorder. His receptive language is getting better. His nonverbal IQ tests were average. The language based part of the test was very low. The thing about this is EVERYTHING about school and life is language based! So we have some challenges and some work to do. Basically he will perform in school at the level he is language-wise. His reading and phonics are good...almost on grade level. But he was very low kindergarten level on other subjects like knowing stuff about things. He missed the question about who Cinderella was. (That makes sense to me because we don't own that video and there are no girls in this house. But ask about Nemo or KungFu Panda and he'll know. Stupid standardized test.) He didn't know what hibernate is.

So, what are we going to do? We have some things to mull over.
There was the suggestion of ADD and meds. We're really mulling that over. This is not the first time we've heard this suggestion from a Dr. We're just not quite ready to go that route yet. And because we're homeschooling we have more freedom with what we decide. We'll see.

We need to find a private SLP who can provide a good language based home program for us to work on. This is a challenge where we live. I have a person in mind. She worked with him last year in the school but no longer works for the school. I don't know if she does private therapy or not. The school says they will not serve him next year if we do not enroll him. I'm still checking that out.
We need to help James categorize and file things in his brain. For example, a frog is an animal, hops, grows from a tadpole,....If you ask James to tell you about a frog he will not say that a frog is an animal. He will start talking about a frog he had in the swimming pool last summer. He tends to talk around the subject and not get to the most important thing that describes an object. For example when asked to tell us about the ocean he did not say it was water.

So while we're going to continue working on our school work, we need to get his language and that filing system in his brain fixed. Because basically he will come along as his language gets better. Reading will help with language and they are kind of symbiotic.

This evaluation was a good thing for me because it helps to refocus, re-energize and re-motivate me. There were some hard things to hear but I realize we don't have it as bad as some of the kids I saw in the waiting room.