Matthew and I have been a little concerned over Jeremiah's communications skills. We, through our doctor, had him evaluated with Alabama's Early Intervention System. They came out to our house yesterday and did a series of things with Jeremiah. They don't score them on an actual number but rather on what age level they are at.
Turns out Jeremiah has a language delay. Nothing too scary to worry about but definitely something we are going to get him help with. The EIS actually has someone who will come out to house 2x a month to do speech therapy with him. Once he turns 3 then the public school system will work with him to get him into programs if needed. This is not something he'll need the rest of his life but something he needs now to 'catch up' to where he needs to be.
They're also going to schedule him an appointment to have his hearing tested... not just the tympanogram test they do in the doctors office but a test that will actually test his tones. He cuts off parts of the words so it could be because he's not hearing them.
Matthew took off work to be here yesterday for the evaluation. We had all the little ones here actually. And at the end of the meeting I made a comment about how I'd always just thought b/c they were twins thats why they're a little behind. Well the lady was surprised that they were twins and said she thought Jeremiah was a year older than Jacob! She said the twin thing doesn't apply once they're over the age of 18 months. She said that Jacob needed to be evaluated too b/c he was a bit behind as well. So now we've got another appointment for Jacob.
The doctor and both the lady for Early Interventions stressed that we need to get our kids around other kids and we need to expose them to more outside things so they can learn how to cope and socialize. So we're looking into different options.
Now let me just say this... I nor Matthew are looking for any labels for our kids. I don't want someone to say they're something just for the sake of giving my child a label. However, being told your child has a language delay is not the such a bad thing. BECAUSE they're going to get speech therapy and that will really do wonders for them. I'm excited about the services that will be provided to them.