Speech, Speech

Last week I got a chance to sit with the speech therapy specialist at Jada’s school. We had formally requested services at the beginning of the school year and were denied, and because of that could have a meeting to discuss their evaluation. I had no problem not securing free services, but just wanted to go over their take on Jada and let them know where Amy and I were coming from.

Amy has been handling this kind of thing since the beginning, so I kind of stumbled along, but I think it was a successful conversation. The speech therapy specialist said that in their testing of Jada, and in conversing with her teacher, they did not feel she warranted special services from the School District. I said I agreed with that, but wanted to share a little bit of what exactly is Jada’s speech delay, and how that affects her self-esteem and schooling: she doesn’t quite do free-form conversation so great, she relies on her incredible memorization skills and social comfortability to get by, but sometimes will isolate herself out of fear of being embarrassed because she doesn’t know what to say next.

The speech therapy specialist was very sympathetic, and told me she would alert Jada’s teacher and other adults in the school so they could help Jada out. That’s really all I wanted out of the meeting, so I left feeling good. We’re not sure if we will pay for private speech therapy from here on out – Jada’s such a good student, and is in a good school with a good teacher, so it could be that she can work out her speech delays through that – but I was glad for at least that one session to talk with the specialist.