Our Little Boy is Talking!

Our son is 2-and-a-half years old and up until about a month ago he could say less than 10 words.  I can't tell you how many times we've been so frustrated that all we're doing to teach him isn't working!

A child psychologist we took him to almost a year ago diagnosed him with autism, but I disagree with her diagnosis for a number of reasons.  His problem was and still is speech and cognition.

Last month we took him in to see a hearing specialist and he passed his hearing tests with flying colors.  Mc and I never thought his hearing was an issue, but now everyone can rule it out for sure.

We had him evaluated a few weeks ago for an Early Intervention program, and he qualifies because of his low speech and cognition levels for his age.

About a month ago Mc heard a program on the radio talking about brain hemispheres and child development.  The man said that most children are right-handed, and because the right side of the body is controlled by the left side of the brain, and the speaking center of the brain is in the left hemisphere, then most children learn to talk fairly early.  Our son is left-handed, he's been distinctly left-handed since he was about a year old, and so Mc thought that maybe our son isn't talking yet because his dominant brain hemisphere is his right hemisphere and not his left.

That was a very interesting theory to me, and right away I looked up information that I could find on the internet about brain hemispheres and child development.  I finally found a book that looked like what I was looking for, called The Dominance Factor.
I found it here:  http://www.amazon.com/Dominance-Factor-Knowing-Dominant-Learning/dp/0915556316/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408044362&sr=1-2&keywords=the+dominance+factor

I learned so much about my son's, my daughter's, and my learning styles from this book-- there are 32 different styles-- and a lot of things I knew about myself and my kids now make sense.  I definitely recommend this book.

Almost at the same time that Mc heard this radio program, our son began actively repeating simple words that we say, and that's the first time he's consistently tried to do that.  He's been babbling for a long time, and it's like all of a sudden he decided to want to learn how to speak.  He is a very big, strong, physical boy who has incredible balance and coordination and a great understanding of his body and his surroundings.  I guess he decided he's ready to work on speaking now.

I love my little boy.  He's a very active, very happy, very sweet boy.  He horses around with his sister but he's never overly-rough with her, and with little babies at the playground he's very gentle.  He has a cute smile and his laugh is a pleasure to hear.  And now that I have a better understanding of what his learning style is, I have a better idea of how to help him learn.

We just got our daughter into a preschool so that she can have a place to learn with children her own age and her own development level, and so she can make friends that she can see almost every day.  She has made a few friends at the playgrounds, but they don't come regularly and she needs friends.  I'm excited for her (and she's very excited, too), and I'm also glad for this time I'll have with my son to start teaching him words and sentences.  Now that he wants to learn, the quiet time with me will be important.

I'm excited for the progress he's making on his own, and I'm excited to see how things will go in the near future.