Speech eval

His speech evaluation was yesterday. She got a really good view of Charlie at his best and not-best in the 80 minutes we were there.

Things started off well. He sat, he answered questions. Every now and then he'd get up and try to find something more interesting to do in the room, but was pretty re-direct-able. (How do you like that word??)

He seemed on edge after awhile, so she took him into the therapy gym to play a bit. It was getting hard to sitting in a place he's used to playing, as he goes there for his occupational therapy. And he saw his OT working with another kid, which seemed to confuse him a bit--her job is to play with Charlie, right??

The test is kind of interesting. There are things he answered that surprised me as well as things that I knew he could do that he just didn't that day. I'm assuming that's normal for the process, though.

One of the last parts of the test was a series of analogies and his responses cracked us up.

Speech Therapist: We sit on a chair, but we sleep on a
Charlie: Dog.
ST (looking at me): Does he sleep with the family dog?
Me: (shrug) We don't have a dog.

A few more questions go by, and then this:

ST: An apple is red, but a banana is
C: Black.
Me: But they're yellow when I buy them!

All in all it went well. She said he has no trouble with his words as much as his communication and that is something they can certainly work on. Unfortunately, the test doesn't capture that area quite as well, so his score will be higher than reflects his ability and Medicaid may reject coverage on the basis of those scores.

I think the most interesting part was that he didn't seem to hear the words 'not' or 'no' when in a question. She'd ask, "Which shape is not a star?" and he'd point to every star. "Which basket has no eggs?" and he would point to the eggs. "Which tree doesn't have any apples on it?" and he would point out the apples.

I have to think about that to figure out what it means, know what I mean?

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Edited to add:
I realized after posting this that I left out the three times during the testing that he got upset and I had to hold him for a bit. Each time, he took off my glasses and either folded them up and squeezed really hard or threw them to the ground.

At the end, he did not want to leave. He wanted to have his time to play in the gym with his OT and was really confused as to why. I hung out in the waiting room for a good while as he touched the doorjamb, looked out the window and touched all the buttons on the vending machine. I thought he was finally ready to go, so I picked him up to carry him to the van (it was nasty cold and raining, so I was trying to move quickly) and he flipped out. Tore out a chunk of my hair, arched back, threw my glasses to the floor and began to kick.

I carried him out as he tantrumed and strapped him into his carseat. He screamed the whole way home. Once home, he ran over to a cabinet in the living room and threw everything on it two the ground, then climbed atop it and stayed for the next hour, growling if I so much as looked at him.

It was not one of our better days. There have been more and more of these lately, and he is getting stronger than I can handle. I know there has been a lot of upheaval in our lives and that it is not helping.

Tomorrow the school district psychologist comes out to observe Charlie in playgroup. I hope, pray, wish that he gets into the developmental preschool because Charlie needs things beyond my abilities some times these days.