Guest guest Posted June 13, 2001 Report Share Posted June 13, 2001 -- I agree with everyone here -- get him evaluated now. You don't need the pediatrician's referral to do it. My son is 26 mo. with only mama, dada, and a small range of sounds, but eager to communicate. When my pediatrician said again at the 2-yr check-up to " wait and see " , I went home immediately and pulled out the yellow pages to find a speech pathologist. There are two ways to go about it, and I would consider doing both at the same time to get second opinions. One is to call the speech pathologists (may be listed under speech therapy as SLP's) and ask if they work with very young nonverbal children -- I found that the ones who work with kids usually work with older kids and the first I tried clearly was not good with little ones. I was charged $80 for the evaluation. The other approach is to find your county's " Early Intervention " program, which provides free (and in my case, very thorough) evaluations of speech, fine and gross motor skills, cognitive ability, social/behavioral, and self-help skills. It is a federally funded program for children up to the age of three. The name seems to vary from state to state and county to county. They will have either therapists on staff, or more likely, a list of good private ones that work with toddlers and provide service in your home. Many programs even provide free or subsidized therapy -- our program bases cost of services on family income. To find yours, see http://www.nectas.unc.edu/contact/ptccoord.html which lists the state coordinators for all the states. Call your state coordinator to find your local program, and call them to refer your child. They have legal requirements that they meet with you within 10 days of your call, and do the evaluation within 30 days, so there is no undue bureaucratic delay. It was a worthwhile step for me, because they identified motor skill and cognitive delays that we were not really aware of. They recommended great therapists and we had him in therapy within 4 weeks of my first call. I found their therapists to be better than the ones I found through the phone book, because they specialize in little ones. ============================================================================ This message contains information which may be confidential and privileged. Unless you are the addressee (or authorized to receive for the addressee), you may not use, copy or disclose to anyone the message or any information contained in the message. If you have received the message in error, please advise the sender by reply e-mail @mofo.com, and delete the message. Thank you very much. ============================================================================ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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