Amber's Speech

Next week I get the whole diagnosis report for Amber's learning delays. But this week, her new speech therapist, Janie, went over her test results with me on her language skills and I have to say I was a little excited. Amber is only 1 year behind the other kids her age in speech. When she was in preschool last year, most had a difficult time understanding her and she was 4 -speaking with the range of a 2 1/2 year old. Now at 5 1/2 she is speaking as a 4 1/2 year old. That just blows my mind how quickly she is developing her language and alot of it I feel is the choice we made to not wait a year before putting her in Kindergarten. Being around the other children her age, I'm know has helped her in so many ways. Most of her language delays now are grammar and a few pronunciation that Janie (the speech path) thinks might be because of how her lower jaw makes her have an underbite. She also said that Amber will probably end up testing out of having speech help at school because she is just over the % mark for those that qualify for it through the district. She thinks that Amber has the great quality of self correcting herself when she is wrong-she strongly thinks that this will make Amber's progresss go faster than most children. I am so glad that Amber is starting this new program to get the help I know she needs.
And you want to hear more exciting things that happened last night?? Big Sister Whitney was writing a letter to the toothfairy (she got two teeth pulled at the Denstist yesterday) and Amber sat down to write her own letter. Ofcourse she mostly wrote her name a few times and then some odd letters-but this is a child who I've had the most difficult time in getting her to practice letters and sound recognition, let alone reading. She is now understanding why she needs to learn these and last night as we went through her letter recognition worksheet-she only missed 8 out of 100!! I am so proud of her!