Speech Therapy

I am delighted to say that our son had his appointment with the ear nose and throat specialist in February and got the “all clear” that we had been hoping for!

All the fluid has cleared and his temporary hearing loss has subsided and his speech has improved 100% in the past 6 months to boot.

We suspected that his hearing check would have positive results as we had noticed his pronounciation had become so much clearer.

It’s been almost a year since we experienced tantrums of frustration with our son due to others sometimes struggling to understand what he was saying.

We have many friends with children who ended up needing grommets and we feel lucky that our little boys hearing sorted itself out without further intervention.

We had arranged some private speech therapy for him towards the end of last year (which he enjoyed as it involved one on one games too!) but with things having improved so much and as a result speech reviews at our local clinic, we have decided speech therapy is no longer needed.

We have learned  how much a lack of hearing can impact on a childs speech and  often speech therapy is required as a result of  fluid being present  in childrens ears.

Therefore hearing checks are increasingly important in our household and we will make a note to take the twins to an audiologist when they are 3yrs.

They speak so  well though (and their pronounciation is far better than their brothers was at the same age) that we do not have any need for concern in general BUT we will follow up and check their hearing all the same!

Potty Training

Well, 3 months have passed since i made the decision to start potty training our 2 yr old daughters-and I am delighted to say that they have been doing so well(with hardly any accidents!).

We just decided to do away with wearing a nappy, apart from at sleep time and take the potty pretty much everywhere we went!

We have 2 potties, a little red “turtle potty” which stays out in the courtyard for when we are playing  and accompanies us out on our daily jaunts..and a stay at home potty which is designed more like a mini toilet,with toilet seat etc.

The girls were so frightened of sitting on the potty at the start,but now love it-even having competitions between themselves with who can get to the potty first!

I did mainly put them in dresses and skirts to start off with in making it easier for them to sit quickly and do their business!

Now,I am happy to say,with the cooler weather, we have progressed to trousers and leggings and tights without any major issues.

The twins were also scared of the toilet initially but started asking to go on the toilet aswell as asking for their potty so we encourage that as much as possible too.

It will be some time before they are out of night nappies I know but the whole potty training has gone surprisingly well.

I really thought it would be harder with twins but it seems to have worked in our favour so far as the girls have competed against one another to see who could do the first number two on the potty and the toilet for example.

I am thinbking that we will try to do away with nappies altogether by the time they are three(as we did this successfully with their brother)

Fingers crossed all will continue as positivily as it has begun with the potty in our household!

The importance of hearing checks..

We had the standard “hearing checks” conducted with all three of our children whilst they were newborns at the hostpital.

Then at the 2yr health check up i enquired if another test was required and was told by my GP that unless there was any cause for concern, then this would not be neccessary..

It wasn’t until our son turned 3 and started at pre school where they conducted a ” speech screening test” that we realised the importance of such hearing checks.

Connor was pronouncing some of his words incorrectly or with an accent(this could well be due to my English accent and his fathers Irish background) and when in a group he was becoming frustrated if his peers could not always understand what he was saying.

This lead to a few tears and tantrums at pre school halfway through the year and we had a meeting and agreed on an assessor coming from the child start program on the coast to see if he may need some speech therapy down the line.

Interestingly, the first question this lady asked me, was if Connor had recently had his hearing checked as this could be affecting his pronounciation.

We proceeded to book an appointment with an audiologist and were given the news that he had hearing loss in both of his ears due to fluid in his ear.

This, although quite common, came as a bit of a shock to my husband and I as we had not noticed any major signs.

We followed up with a further hearing check and 3 months later another check up appointment.

The result has been a course of antibiotics from the doctors to try to clear the fluid and as his hearing appears to have gotten worse, we are now scheduled to see an ear, nose and throat specialist in February to see if Grommets will be needed.

We will have to go on a waitlist for this.

We also had to go on a waiting list for various appointments and speech therapy assessments and as this took a few months,we did seek private speech pathology for 3 months until the assessments said he was doing well with his speech and would need to go back for reviews.

The long and short of it is that the importance of hearing checks is grossly underestimated as it can affect a childs speech at the most crucial of ages.

Luckily we are making things happen and trying to stay on top of things for our son and do what is needed.

We are hoping that he will either have an operation before he starts school next year or at least, we may have a date in the diary for check ups and the  assistance he needs.

Lets keep our fingers crossed that our other children do not suffer the same problem- and at least, knowledge is power ,so, as parents we are now very much aware of the importance of hearing checks from an early age….