once upon a time there was a boy who never talked...

Several months ago at Ethan's 18 month well-child check up, the doctor recommended an Early Intervention Evaluation to figure out why Ethan is not talking yet. It probably wouldn't be too big of a deal if he had a few syllables but he doesn't even say ma, da or ba or anything like that. I will admit that even though I was trying to calm myself down with thoughts like, "he's the youngest, everyone talks for him", or "he's smart enough to talk, he just doesn't want to yet", there was a part of me that was super nervous to hear something about autism or other developmental issues. When we went for the evalutation, I was shocked at how thorough they were with him, and the different ways they were able to get information from him. Their "tests" were disguised as play time and Ethan loved it. He passed everything they gave him with flying colors and were even impressed by how much he understood even if he doesn't respond verbally. The end result was this, he is a smart little boy who just isn't ready to start talking, but it's clear that there's nothing "wrong" with him developmentally. It was a huge relief, I remember pulling into the Costco parking lot after our appointment and feeling a little teary-eyed as I took a deep breath. I don't think I realized until how really worried I was that something might be wrong. We had our choice to put him in speech therapy, because at the time he was about 11 months behind in that specific area so he definitely qualified for it, or we could try and work with him at home. We decided to go forward with the speech therapy, what could it hurt right and Friday was finally the first day that Jean came to our house to work with Ethan.

He doesn't usually take to strangers so quickly but right away she got down on the floor and pulled out a bag of toys and he liked her from the get-go. He stayed engaged the entire hour that she was here, she was impressed by that. She was surprised that he still isn't using any syllables but gave us some fun games to try to play with him that should encourage him to model what we're doing and eventually start communication verbally. I'm sure that they will come with time, his words I mean, but for now we can just enjoy his funny laugh that comes straight from his belly.