JTOK Chatter

Owen had his classroom observation and speech evaluation today. Long story short, neither the teacher nor the speech therapist saw any glaring issues—and both said he seems to be above average intelligence for his age and they see no academic issues at all. They said most of what we’re seeing will probably resolve itself once he starts hanging out with kids his age.

In more detail…the classroom observation went well according to the teacher. She said he didn’t really play with the other kids, but he watched—and towards the end of the time (an hour) he started to get closer to them. She said he talked to the teacher and no one had any problems understanding him. He listened when things were explained and understood how to use the toys he was being shown (a kid’s laptop-type toy). She said from her perspective, he was just fine academically—and possibly even a little advanced (seeing as how he just turned three). So, that’s good news. As a sidenote, she said she did cut the session short by just a bit because he was getting anxious about wanting to see me—which really surprised me, but also made me feel good!—he apparently kept asking about me but kept playing…but finally said he wanted to see me and was pretty set on it. Awwww. 🙂

The speech therapist first said he is such a sweet little boy. And big for his age. And that she had to keep reminding herself he was just three because he seemed smarter than that. (YAY!) 🙂 She said some of his speech issues were age-related—for example, certain letter combinations don’t fully appear until age 6 or 7. And she said that he was very conversational—she knew he had a cat named Charlie who he played with and he watched TV in mama’s room. She was impressed with his vocabulary (he was talking about propellers and alligators) and his hearing (saying he heard helicopters outside, noticing sounds in the hallway and asking what they were) and said that when he parrots back things you say, he’s not just making the sounds—he seems to really be thinking about it and understanding it. She said in all honesty—though she hadn’t tallied his actual test results yet—she has no worries about his speech at all.

The results meeting in two weeks to discuss if he needs any special education is pretty much just a formality to say no. Which is a good thing.

Phew.

Now I just need to find him a preschool (though they said the drop-in daycare would be fine for now, too).