My son Will did not speak for the longest time. At age 2 he only had a few words. I felt there was a problem, everyone else said give him time. Still, the concerned lingered in the back of my mind. I had him evaluated and he was promptly enrolled in a speech playgroup. Not much happened. He turned 3 and was enrolled in preschool with speech therapy. Not much happened, except I didn't have to pay for preschool, because he didn't speak. When he was 3 1/2, a kind lady from the school district said she wasn't sure if he would ever speak and we needed a $3,000 AAC device for him to communicate. Oh, and would our insurance pay for it. NOOOOOOO it wouldn't, nor would we. She decided the school would pay for it. But, it would be months before we would get it. So, we devised our own on the nintendo ds using tap to talk. Words started coming. We hired a private speech therapist to the tune of $100 per hour (not covered by insurance). Words came faster. Faster, faster, faster. The device the school bought sat on the counter and was rarely used. They gave it to someone else. He is getting caught up. When he is older, he will probably speak better than most.
What's the problem you ask? He NEVER shuts up. From the moment he wakes up until he falls asleep at night, his mouth is moving. His favorite word of all...MOM. Every sentence starts with Mom. I've tried explaining to him that you only have so many words a day to use, but that hasn't helped.
So, I am wondering why I spent thousands of dollars on speech therapy just to tell my kid to shut up!
