What Happens in a Speech Evaluation ?

My answer is like the others who have posted. My daughter was born special needs and she had her speech testing around 2 maybe 2.5, and they also tested her hearing several times, just to make sure she was able to hear what was being said to her. She had "average" hearing and most of her speech delay was due to her cognitive and development delay. She has had EI since she was 6 months old and currently goes to a preschool program called Excite, she loves it! She is going to be 5 in May and has about 100 word vocabulary. She communicates very differently. Speech therapy helped her so much! She still gets therapy to this day and probably will for the rest of her life. Good luck!

Good Friday Morn, K.!

So many kidz, so many different times to talk...BUT I DO have one instance that might make you feel less worried. My GS who has been with us since he was 13 months said, "EINE" as in Albert Einstein but basically NOTHING else until he was nearly 3! The pediatrician said, "just wait" (several times, cuz' I was frantic about it) and sure enough because his hearing, etc. was good he began to talk, and talk he did! He talks more than our GD here & that's saying ALOT!

I am not saying your DS's lack of speaking is exactly the same, but just relaying my personal experience. I hope your outcome WILL be the same as ours was!

Best to You!
A.

My son was evaluated at 24 months, I was with him the whole time and they were clearly very used to that age group. He had about 20 words and he qualified for a therapist to come to the house every week. Don't worry!

My child was around 2.5 when we had him evaluated. We actually had one done through early intervention and then 2 done on our own. The early intervention one covered more than just speech. I was in the room with him answering questions while another person was testing my son. The tests were play based.

The speech only evaluations I had done were also play based. Some of the tests were geared toward testing the child's understanding so it's not required that the child speak a lot. Sometimes the testing involved repetition to see if that would draw the child into speaking or, in the case of a younger child, demonstrating the behavior. One therapist pulled out some bubbles to try to watch my son's mouth movement in order to test coordination and muscle movement of the mouth.

I was worried my son wouldn't talk at all either, but he did well and they were able to hear some of the things that I was concerned about. For the most part, I was in the room with him, but managed to leave the room for part of one evaluation because my son was interacting too much with me and not her. But if your child doesn't want you to leave there should be no reason that you shouldn't be able to stay. My suggestion is to try not to engage him while the therapist is doing the evaluation unless the therapist requests it. If my son came over to me, I wouldn't engage in play but instead would redirect him back to the therapist.

My son ended up with a borderline need for speech therapy. We did it for about 6 months and it made a huge difference.

For the regular sessions, I initially went into the room with him but stayed off to the side. I did my best to redirect him back to the therapist when he came over to me and I also avoided trying to interpret what he was saying because I wanted the therapist to not be affected by what I knew of his speaking ability. Eventually, I worked up to staying in the waiting room for part of the session and then he'd come get me. Later I could stay in the waiting room the whole time. I also "escaped" a few times in the beginning by saying I had to go to the bathroom and I'd be back in a bit. Then I'd leave and come back in 5-10 minutes and pop my head in. If he didn't miss me, I'd stay in the waiting room.

My son had an eval around age 3, and it was play-based. I stayed in the room, but I sat at a table while the teacher followed my son around as he investigated the toys. They would ask him questions about certain toys, or direct him to put away one he was done with. They checked for understanding language, not just speech output.

My DS had an eval when he was about your sons age. We had it done through early intervention. It is play based so they will play with your son, may show him some pictures etc. They are used to kids wanting to run around and play, so don't worry about that. You are right it is better to do the eval now, the earlier the intervention the better. Our outcome was that our son has a speech delay and they got us a speech therapist to come to our house once a week. When he turned three he went to pre-school with an IEP. We still have a private speech therapist come to our house once a week (he is 4 1/2) but he is making really big improvements. Good Luck! Dont worry at all!