Bonnie is just like the rest of us, running her mouth all day long. The only difference is that you won't understand most of what she says. Chances are, you'd only be able to pick out Hi, Mama, No and Guy (her name for Jack.)
Bonnie's gibberish talk has been a growing concern for Tom and me since her first birthday. Unlike Jack who was introducing himself as Trevor, his favorite engine on "Thomas and Friends", at 18 months old and Natalie who had a firm grasp on language by the time she hit 12 months -- the better to berate you with, my dear! -- Bonnie did not pick up language effortlessly. She could run, jump, hop, throw and kick a ball long before she looked big enough to do. Her physical prowess far exceeded her verbal prowess from the start.
She said Baby once or twice last winter but stopped using that word within a week of first doing so. Same for Cat and a few other words that I've since forgotten along with her. She kept up a steady stream of chatter all day long but it was nonsense. One minute it sounded like Chinese, next minute she was clicking like one of those tribes in Africa. She obviously could hear and knew what we were saying, following directions well and materializing at my side if I even touched the snacks cabinet door. We just didn't know what she was saying. The inflection, the hand gestures, all of Natalie's speech patterns were there in Bonnie but Bon's words were gibberish.
I took her for a speech evaluation through the county in October. Although she clammed up the minute we walked into the room, the team decided that they saw enough to say that she was only mildly delayed and therefore ineligible for intervention services.
Same deal when I took her for a private evaluation at the local children's hospital a few weeks later. (Let the record show that the evaluator there also worked for the county and was none too pleased to see that I was "second guessing" the county's findings.)
We went back to the children's hospital for a formal hearing evaluation -- I knew she could hear but the speech teams wanted proof -- and she passed with flying colors.
Christmas came and went. Girlfriend had added a few words but if you didn't know her, you probably wouldn't recognize them.
At her follow-up appointment to check on her tubes, the ENT was outraged that the county denied her services. He urged me to push the issue. I did and the county agreed to see her again once she turned 2 when the criteria for acceptable speech changes.
Our beloved pediatrician, normally a "wait and see" kind of guy, was concerned about her speech delays when we went in for her 2 year old check-up. He thought the reevaluation with the county would be slam dunk and that Bonnie would be getting help in no time.
He was wrong.
The evaluating team came out this morning, first the speech therapist followed by the social worker handling our case and someone else who wasn't introduced but was most likely an occupational therapist.
I shot a video of Bonnie this morning so they could see her babbling in action since I knew how she clams up with strangers. The speech therapist wasn't interested in seeing it. Instead, she set up some toys and asked Bonnie to feed a baby doll, give a bear a drink from a cup, point to sneakers, a cookie, a sleeping child in a book.
Ummm, hello. I said she can't speak, not that she can't understand. Maybe the county folks are the ones with the hearing problem?
Of course, she could follow all of the directives thrown her way like a good little trained monkey. She stacked blocks, she put pennies in a bank, she pointed to pictures, she hopped up and down. You name it, they asked her to do it and she did.
At this point, I'm steaming. WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH SPEECH???
The county grades children on two types of speech delays and roles them up into one score. Expressive delays are the inability to generate speech (Bonnie's problem) and receptive delays are the inability to understand the speech of others (sooooooo NOT Bonnie's problem.)
Basically, Bonnie did poorly on the expressive tests but did so well on the receptive tests that it threw off her score and shows her as having only a mild delay. She came in at having the abilities of a 20 month old rather than the 24 month old that she is.
Okay, I'm no expert and I'm well aware of that fact but why in the FUCKING HELL does being able to put blocks in a tea cup on demand mean that her garbled babbling is "normal"??? She can DO the tasks presented but she can't TALK about them. How is that not a problem? How is that not something she needs -- DESERVES!!! -- help fixing?
The speech therapist concluded by comparing Bon and me to her brother and his autistic child. Apparently, her brother and his wife ignored their son's problems (hi, kind of the opposite of what I'm doing) and made his life too easy by making him comfortable with his difficulties rather than seeking help (again, that's the antithesis of me as I battle to get my child help with her issues.) They "over loved" him and I'm "over loving" Bonnie by not forcing her to talk.
Both the speech therapist and the rest of the team want me to go to several months worth of classes called "It Takes Two to Talk" which will begin by filming me interact with Bonnie so that they can show me all of the things that I'm doing wrong with her.
Besides "over loving" her, I guess.
In a nutshell, it's my fault. Seriously, though, when isn't it the mother's fault?
If she was my first child, I probably would have dropped her off at a neighbor's and then come home to kill myself out of the guilt and grief over ruining her speech growth. This ain't my first rodeo, friends, so no worries about me offing myself. Instead, I have to laugh. I mean, Mr. Jack Tobin could talk the paint off a fence and The Madam is no slouch in the communications department either. I'm not doing anything different with their little sister than I did with them so obviously it's not all on me.
I just make an easy target. Isn't that lovely?
Speaking of my other children, the speech therapist said that they are probably speaking for Bonnie, keeping her from speaking for herself (over lovers, every last one of us!) Okay, seriously, I expect that kind of "explanation" from well-meaning friends but from a speech therapist? Come ON! Jack and Natalie are away from home from 8:00 a.m. until almost 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. Does she think they send me text messages from class, letting me know when Bonnie wants lunch or something? Dumbass.
So, I will keep over loving my child as we await the neurology appointment our pediatrician wants her to have. He doesn't expect any surprises, just wants to rule out any neurological issues that could be keeping her brain from working with her mouth.
Here is the video I shot for the therapist who didn't care to watch it. Does that sound like a 2 year old to you? Truly, I want to know. Maybe my older 2 are gifted or something and I never realized it. Stranger things have happened, I guess.
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