I know… with that title, you were expecting me to say, “Until you hire a lawyer”. But being a lawyer’s daughter and a lawyer’s sister, I keep my wisecracks about lawyers to a minimum. And honestly, if you don’t know the law, maybe you should know my dad… or my brother…
But I digress…
Okay. Back to the point. Not that I was ever there in the first place…
Talking. Something that I really like to do. And something that about a year ago, our second-born son, Jonah, did not do. I have shared a bit about Jonah’s spirit in the past. He is a child that is full of fire. Full of what everyone tells me is “second child syndrome”. And he likes to test. the. limits. And our patience. And the wackiest thing is, we just adore him. Even when we don’t {like when he’s thrashing up and down on the floor, screaming at the top of his lungs and cursing his parents}, we still do. He’s tricky like that. And he’s fully embraced the concept of being two and a half.
Today, Adam and I met with Jonah’s IFSP services team. IFSP is short for Individual Family Service Plan. And because one year ago, Jonah qualified for services through the Elkhorn School District and Early Childhood Intervention through the State of Nebraska, he has an IFSP and a team of people who work with us to help our family give Jonah just what he needs to be prepared for pre-school and then, school. And in Jonah’s case, what he needed was Speech Therapy.
A little Reader’s Digest background so you don’t have to go back and re-read… At Jonah’s 18 month appointment, he had three words in his toolbox. Three. And they were actually not even technically words, they were actually approximations or attempts at words. And in place of words, he had tantrums. On the regular. And we were nearing our wit’s end, I believe. And I was concerned that perhaps we were missing something. And so our pediatrician recommended we do two things:
2) submit the paperwork for an Early Childhood Development screening.
We went through A LOT of meetings, filling out scantrons and assessing where Jonah was thriving and where he was struggling. Through this process, he was screened for a variety of developmental and behavioral diagnoses. And at the end of it all, he ended up with a diagnosis that he would need weekly speech therapy, in our home, for a speech delay, and also had tubes placed last February when it was determined that his hearing was basically non-existent due to fluid in his eardrum. Apparently some people don’t want to accept services, because they think it means their kid won’t get into Harvard. And as I am sure you can surmise, that notion really bothered us, too {apparently Adam didn’t speak until he was three. And we all know how that turned out}.
Now, I’d love to say that we started speech therapy and two months later, he was a cherub. An absolute peach. But he was not. Still isn’t, in fact. I mean, he is still two. But he is leaps and bounds beyond where he started. He is downright joyful now… intermixed with downright ridiculously emotional {where does he get that, I wonder…} but joyful more than ridiculous. And he is engaged with the world around him. He also has absurd outbursts about anything ranging from his cup not having ice to his not wanting the book that he chose. In fact, he some days, rules our world with what I believe are his terrible two tantrums. But he does speak. But gosh, if you knew him last year and you know him now, he’s come a long way, baby. And we are pleased as punch.
Because today, in his IFSP meeting, we got the best news.
As I said, last year, when we began the speech process, Jonah had three approximations.
Today. Today he has an estimated 600 words in his vocabulary. {among lots of other really positive outcomes}
And that is worth any amount of meetings, therapy sessions and beyond.
We aren’t done. We’ve got a bit of work to get him to where he needs to be. But they are ever-so-pleased with his progress. And so are we. We’re so proud of him. And Jonah is pleased to be a communicator now. And gosh it feels good to see your kids happy. Doesn’t it? And to be able to feel happiness for them. Right?
As I mentioned above, the tantrums, the meltdowns, the colossal PMSing that he suffers from day to day, those are not gone. But they have decreased. And they sometimes make sense now. So far we’ve tried about four hundred and seventy-six tactics to work through these two-riffic terrors. We’ve done love and logic. But he does not see any logic in that. We’ve tried timeouts and calm down times. We’ve yelled. We’ve ignored. We’ve given consequences. We’ve given hugs. We’ve removed him from the trigger. We’ve removed the trigger from him. We’ve laughed. We’ve sang. And on some occasions, we’ve thrown our hands in the air like we just don’t care. And I’m assuming that those fits could definitely peak before they even out. Because he’s two. And he has all these emotions. And doesn’t always know how to use them. {I mean, heck, I’m 31 and I have all these emotions. And don’t always know how to use them}
At 18 months, I dubbed J bird our sourpatch kid. Someday I might feel bad for saying that, but right now, I can say that it really was the truth. And still at times, he can be sour {and on occasion, extremely sour}, for the most part, he can be really, really sweet. And we see the tender, endearing, charmer much more than the sour these days, which is a vast improvement. And in parenting, seeing improvement is a sanity saver. And I credit a lot of that sanity saving, to his speech therapy.
The services we receive are free {ahem… our tax dollars at work}. And while there were some hoops to jump through, it was well worth it. Because in Jonah’s case, talk was cheap. In fact, I’d venture to say we’d even call it, priceless.