speech evaluation: step 3

Today we met with Tracey, the speech pathologist. She was very nice which has helped in this process a lot.

She listened to Tristan tell her about the zoo (we visited yesterday)...or tried to understand when he was saying. I caught "penguins" and that was about it.

Then she wanted him to sit down, look at these pictures in this book, and answer questions about them. i.e. These kids have jackets on, can you show me her jacket? Can you point to the animals? Can you count the bears? etc Fine and dandy but he got bored/the questions got harder. She said when the questions get harder, the kids try to flee when they're this age. I also think he just hates sitting still for so long unless it's a book he's familiar with.

She had some toys for him to play with and had him do some things with. i.e. The bear is thirsty (wanting him to give the bear a "drink"). Can you put some of these blocks over here? And letting him play with a wind-up toy, wanting him to ask for help (but he didn't because he just made it jump by himself and then moved on to a different toy).

It was interesting to me some of his answers. Once he called a horse a car (he knows horses although sometimes mistakes them for cows). He gave me a cup and said "mommy's" but doesn't seem to know other possessives. Has no idea what "my" or "mine" means. Sort of understood "his" and "hers" (although he doesn't necessarily get who is a boy and who is a girl - he said I was a boy this morning and he whistles when you say girl...like we taught him LOL). He used the spoon to "stir" the cup like he sees his daddy do when he makes his chocolate milk. Moose surprised Tracey by knowing how to count and knowing his colors - that was awesome.

I do wish she would have had methods to getting him to sit down better. Mostly it was me holding him while he's saying "up up" (which means up/down/off/on). It can't be easy working with 2-year-olds. She said he has all of the sounds that he should at this age (b m n w and maybe some more, I can't remember).

I asked what she thought and she didn't want to give me a definitive answer because she wanted to run all of her data and make a report. So I guess I'll hear at the big meeting. I'm stressed about all of this; I think it reflects on me, you know? It's hard to see your child being evaluated. Big A says that's why he thinks it's jumping the gun to have this evaluation at this age, but I figure that if they see a problem and we can fix it, the earlier the better (not knowing if there is a "problem" right now).

Now we just wait for step 4: early childhood education specialist (or teacher?) and then the big meeting.