Check out our little superhero in his League of Incredible Vegetables t-shirt!
Lil Buzz went in for his first (of two) hearing tests, the one in a sound booth sitting on Mom’s lap. All results perfect! They have a month to practice wearing headphones before the second appointment. These aren’t due to any concerns, but because the doctor wants him to see a speech therapist, because he doesn’t talk yet. The insurance will pay for it, but only if they have hearing tests done first. So it’s mainly just to evaluate and probably end up reassuring all of us what we already think, which is that he will talk when he’s darn good and ready … just like his Daddy does.
polination.blog 
Our youngest was a late talker, but ended up talking just fine when it came naturally. I’m still convinced that a wide variety of talking ages is inevitable when children (and adults) have such a wide range of tendencies to favor left or right regions of the brain. That seems to have been born out with our kid. He’s a right-brain, conceptual kid like his dad, and language is not a strength for either of us. I just think that’s the way God makes kids. Why put ’em on timelines for stuff like that?
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Thomas Sowell writes about this subject a lot, because he had a son who was a late talker. He did a lot of research into the subject and found that lots of perfectly normal healthy kids get all kinds of stupid labels slapped on them if they haven’t started talking by whatever age the experts consider acceptable. This is one reason for the huge increase in the number of children being diagnosed with autism, even though many of them aren’t really autistic. But the schools like to label kids as having disabilities or special needs because it increases the level of funding they get, and Sowell found that even some parents thought it was a good thing because it meant their kid got special tutoring and extra attention. He talked to parents of late-talking kids who were being urged by other parents to let their kid be labeled autistic so then they would qualify for special benefits unavailable to “normal” children.
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I didn’t know that about the funding or autism. Sheesh.
We’re fortunate that one of Mama Buzz’s fave cousins is a very good speech therapist with boys around the same age as Buzz. The families get together whenever they are anywhere in driving distance and said cousin thinks the world of Mama Buzz’s parenting skills. She lives near her mom and her mil and is agog at how well Mama Buzz handles the military life and how happy and well-adjusted her kids are.
When the ped said he wanted Buzz tested, we emailed her and she passed on a lot of “You’re a great mom” and “Follow your instincts” advice, which leaned heavily on READ TO THEM.
We are all blessed to have had my mother, an avid reader, who instilled a firm habit in all of us by allowing us to keep our lights on an extra 30 minute IF WE WERE READING. She said she didn’t care what we were reading. The boys would read comics or Sports Illustrated or whatever. She just wanted us to get the habit. And boy did we. I can’t go to sleep without a book.
We raised our kids the same and now the next generation is getting it too. The invites for Monkey Mama’s shower include the same thing she put on Buzz Mama’s shower invites … “Please bring a book.” 🙂
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Here’s a very good column by Thomas Sowell on the subject of late-talking children and autism:
http://www.humanevents.com/2008/07/15/autism-cures/
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