Just got back from the speech therapist.
When Douwe was 4, a year ago, he was tested in the US and came in at a 9 - 12 month old level for Language Comprehension and a 12 - 15 month old level for Language Expression.
Today I learned that he now comes in at 5 years 4 months for Langauage Comprehension and 3 years 6 months for Language Expression.
The ST was trying to break it to me gently and came up with all kinds of mitigating factors and god knows what all. She was very nice. I was trying to restrain myself from whooping in celebration. (Does she think I haven't noticed that he talks like a 3 year old?)
She has returned to her original suggestion, which is that we might want to consider sending him to a speech school they have in Breda. I will have to have a look, but really since I was considering the Atlanta Speech School already for him, it may be that we are starting to get back on track from the Big Derailment. That would be nice. Though I'm not holding my breath.
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5 comments:
That is great!!
Dad
Hi, Jennifer,
The bilingual thing is important, but mostly it is important in looking at his test results -- children with 2 languages have the same size vocabiulary as kids with 1, but it's spread over 2 languages so they often do not test well -- the tests are based on 1 language kids, they just are.
So his scores are likely to be a little lower than his actual performance anyway. But his results are still 1.5 standard deviations from the norm for expressive language, which is too much to lay at the feet of bilingualism. He does talk like about a 3 and a half year old, the only problem is, he is trying to say much more complicated things than a child of that age would. Which means he understands language and what he hears but for some reason cannot get it out. It's almost like a stutter, really, only the stutter is somewhere in his brain. And just like a stutter, the more upset/frustrated/embarrassed he gets about the fact that it won't come out, the worse it gets. His language ability just abandons him completely when he's worked up.
However, there is a very fancy and apparently famous doctor in Holland who agrees with you completely -- he says he thinks Douwe will just grow out of it. Well, to be exact, he thinks Douwe will grow into it -- he thinks Douwe's brain development is sort of taking place in a different order than it usually does. But he doesn't think his brain is developing in a different way than is usual. So he thinks the reason Douwe talks like a 3 year old is that the part of his brain dealing with that kind of talking has only just started to develop. Which usually happens at 3, but in Douwe's case is happening now because something else was developing when he was three.
Does that make sense?
He refuses to speculate on what was developing in the mean time, *grin*. I think it was the part of the brain which handles sheer stubborn bloody mindedness, myself. The torture mommy lobe.
Oh, yeah, and the papers are for my green card. If I understand it correctly, I can get dual citizenship, and I may do it. But at this moment, I'm just a legal alien.
Hi, dad,
Yeah, I think so too. And the funney part is, his ability to speak and understand English seems to be keeping pace -- so while we will no doubt have some language issues in the Spring when we come, you don't have to worry about whether the kids will understand you.
I am afraid that you, however, are identified in my house as the guy with the yellow and red race cars. We explained to them not too lang ago about mommy's mom and dad and papa's mom and dad. But both of them responded with a kid version of "pull the other one, it's got bells on". Neither one of them believe for a second that we have parents.
And when I told Douwe I would be the grandmother of his children if he had any, he didn't believe it for one second. I am not old enough, you see. It was explained to me quite seriously that grandmothers are sixty three and I am only thirty eight.
Don't really know how to break the passage of time thing to the little mite.
Actually, I never doubted that Douwe understood what was being said even when he didn't react to it. I am sure it will be fine. Somewhere, you mentioned you may also visit in the summer? When does school start back there in the fall or does it go all summer?
I think you told me once that Holland recgnizes dual citizeship, but the U.S. doesn't, but it does not impact your U.S. citizenship? It would not be a good thing to lose your U.S. citizenship.
We had hail in Winder last weekend or so. It looked like snow on the ground. Thunder and lightening as well. Scary at this time of year because of the possibility of tornadoes. Tulips are ready to open. A number of dafodils already have begun blooming.
Take care,
Dad
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