We have been concerned about Grace's speech for a while now, and it has become very obvious that she is a bit behind other children in the words she can say. Her comprehension is amazing, so we have not been worried about that, but her ability to actually say words is definitely behind. We decided to give it some time and to see if she suddenly started catching up, but there have not been any leaps and bounds in her speech development. Her speech is improving, and the number of words she can use is growing, but it is still behind.

So today we had an appointment with a speech therapist. We wanted to find out if there were any problems, and in the best case just put ourselves at ease that we did not have to worry about anything. She did an assessment which was mostly asking us questions about what Grace can do, and about her development (when she started "speaking", when she started signing, etc.). One of the things that we were impressed by was her observation of Grace and of Grace's little nuances – she read Grace really well and picked up on her tendency to just need to be left to get used to the environment. Grace mostly just played with the toys while we went through all the questions. She brushed Barney's teeth, squeezed the talking Teletubby, played with the school bus and explored the other toys.

As we expected her comprehension is excellent and advanced, but her speaking is behind for her age. It seems that she has a problem with oral motor planning. So to work on that we have to blow whistles, blow out candles, blow bubbles (all things she could not do), work on sounding vowels for her (by giving things noises, like "ba ba ba" for a boat in the bath) and few other things. We will work on that from home and then be back in about a month to see how things are going.

She also said that it is really good we have been signing with Grace, as it helps to develop language, and has given her a way to communicate – it has prevented a lot of frustration.

What was great was that we both felt really good about the appointment and we're excited to work on it to help Grace. As Donné said, you know she is a good therapist when you leave there feeling good even though she has just told you your child has a problem 😉

Donné went and bought some whistles and Grace learnt to blow a whistle today. She also thought it was quite funny when she managed to blow out a candle by blowing through the whistle.

We'll work on it and hopefully see improvements soon.