"When my daughter was thirty months old, she still didn't talk. I took her to the doctor who said it was because we spoke two languages at home and, besides, some children are just quiet. If this had been my first child, I would have just accepted that, gone home and not worried too much more about it for another six months or a year. This was my third child. I KNEW something was wrong. I had a friend I had gone to school with who was now a speech pathologist. I called her up and she made an appointment to test my child. It took all day. She tested my daughter in the clinic. She went to the park with her to see what kind of language she used in a natural setting. There were a lot of scores on tests I had never heard of, but what got me was the chart my friend showed me the next week. It looked like this:"
It doesn't take a degree in speech pathology to see that something was very wrong with my daughter. My friend pointed at the first column and said 'This is how many words the average child speaks at that age'. Then she pointed to the other column, 'This is how many words, total, your daughter used in a day, in Spanish and English combined.' At the time, I had just finished school and was looking for a job. Several universities made me offers. The university where I took a job offered to give my daughter speech therapy three times a week. This was three times what she would have received in an early intervention program. So, three days a week, for two years, I picked her up at preschool and took her to speech therapy. By kindergarten, she was just a little below average. In second grade, she had the lead in her school play. I videotaped it and sent it to her speech therapist. We both said the same thing. If someone had told us four years ago she would be speaking so well, we never would have believed it. My daughter is an adult now, but there have been many, many times over the years when I have asked myself where would she be now if she had not received the speech therapy she needed when she was little? Do you really think she would have 'grown out of it'? I don't think so. Look at that chart again."
The most common service for people with speech and language impairments is speech therapy. This service should be provided by a speech pathologist. Testing to decide if a child or adult has a disability should also be conducted by a qualified individual. Unfortunately, there is a shortage of speech pathologists in Indian country, don't accept that as an excuse. Do not allow your child to be placed in a special education program as speech or language impaired without testing by a qualified professional. No matter how understaffed your area is, they can find a person to come out one day and test your child.
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