CP Awareness: The Words I Needed to Hear

Sometimes I wonder what all the purpose is to all of Asher's therapy. I have no doubt it is helping, but I cannot be sure just how much. At times I wish we could just throw it all away, pack up, and move somewhere tropical, living a much simpler life than we lead now. I think that in that case therapy might not be so missed. But unfortunately, at least for now, that is not the reality. In our current life therapy has a big and important place. Our most recent addition a few months ago was speech therapy. I was concerned by both boys' delayed speaking, and especially in Asher's case, worried that it may be caused by the CP.

Now don't get me wrong - I love the boys' speech therapist. She is a wonderful woman and the boys truly enjoy her, but many times I've thought I may have jumped the gun on getting them referred. They are micro-preemies, they are also boys, and twins: three huge factors against them speaking in any sort of timely manner. Maybe I was over reacting a bit with the referral? But within moments of her walking in the door last week, after a month's absence, I realized I was not.

Not because she discovered some issue with the boys' speech that I hadn't realized - just the opposite in fact. She had no issues with their speech WHAT-SO-E-VER.

In her words, she is thrilled and excited by their progress (if I had to guess I would say they have close to 100 words as compared to 35 a month ago). She is absolutely blown away by the clarity of Asher's speech, and that given how profoundly affected his motor skills are, that is a very pleasant surprise!

As an added bonus, she understood WAY more of their speech than I did. Obviously she has a lot more experience than me in using context to put meaning to words, but I was amazed at the "conversations" they were having that I would otherwise think were just baby talk.

This taught me a valuable lesson - each set of trained eyes we can have on the boys is beneficial to all of us. In this case, it wasn't the boys' ever-increasing vocabulary I needed to hear - it was their therapist's words of praise that made all the difference. We'll continue to be thankful for every bit of therapy and reassurance we can handle.