Can you hear me now?

Last April, when Jared was 20 months old, he refused to say more than just about 8 words.  He was not reaching any of his speech benchmarks.  His wonderful pediatrician, which I will leave for another post, suggested we contact H-KISS a program especially designed to help pre-preschool aged kids.  I thought about it a lot, but decided to call.  Within a week, I had a house full of people telling my poor kid to jump, talk, match, sort, and any number of activities that I had never done with him before.  He failed.  Well, failed is a strong word.  He was behind on many of his benchmarks, but most glaringly, in speech.  Before they agreed to start therapy they wanted to Jared to have a hearing test.  I agreed.  After all, Brandon has a hearing loss in the lower frequency, so I wouldn't have been super surprised if Jared shared the same deficiency.  We brought Jared into the audiology office, they stuck some bowling pin shaped little things in his ear to blow some air into them, and then put him in a silent, hot box and used huge speakers to pipe in beeping noises in all different pitches.  After what felt like 2 sweaty years, the doctor told us that Jared had a slight deficiency, but was still within normal speech range of hearing.  Jared started speech therapy 2-3 times a month after that.

It has been a year.  I am often not sure if I should thank the wonderful people who have come and dedicated their time to my little boy, or if I should punch them.  Jared now has more words than I can keep track of.  I used to be able to record his words in a little notebook, that was how few words he had.  He talks a lot.  Granted, it isn't always intelligible, but it's the start of something that is much closer to benchmark than he was a year ago.  Part of the year review is another audiology appointment.  The speech therapists wanted to know if/how his hearing had changed in a year.

This time, we went to a different audiology office.  The bowling pins were still put inside his ears, along with a Q-tip looking thing that had loud beeps coming from it.  Then were once again locked into a hot, soundproof room.  We tried the headphones for the beeps, but Jared was NOT interested.  We once again did the large speakers.  And once again, they told us that Jared has the same deficiency that he had a year ago, and that they want to see him again in 2 months. 

Now I can never ask Jared if he is deaf, because, well, he DOES have a deficiency.  It explains why sometimes when I whisper to him, he acts as though he can't hear me.  Maybe he really can't.