Little Roger was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate. When he was born, I was optimistic that we would not have the same speech problems that other cleft kids have, as his brother learned to speak really well before he was two. I also thought that listening to us and his older brother would help him learn how to speak correctly.
At age two, he was not saying any real words. There was a lot of whining and grunting and pointing. This was probably the hardest time because everyone, including Roger, was frustrated that we did not understand him.
We had some success with communicating by learning signs from Signing Times. He was able to sign Yes and More and other basic signs which helped get the message across. One thing I noticed is that he really understood everything that we were saying and readily followed directions.
He started speech therapy at age two. I am sure that it did some good, but I didn't notice any vast improvement until he started pre-school at the age of three. When he started, I remember saying that his speech was poor. It made me sad to say such a thing, but truthfully, I, as his mother, could not understand much of what he was saying.
One of the biggest break-throughs was when we started enunciating each syllable. We started to make sense of what he was saying as he progressed from making one-syallable grunts to multi-syllable grunts. Yes, they were still grunts. But, it was evident that he was making progress. We helped teach him the different sounds by clapping out the syllables of each word. Like Ba - Na - Na.
Now at age 4, people that are not normally around him are able to understand some of what he says. His speech report has gone from poor to fair. P's and B's have been the most noticeable struggle. He usually substitutes those for a G sound. But, just recently, he has been able to make both of those sounds, it just isn't consistent. We now need to help him remember which words have the P and B sound.
So, it's a long and sometimes frustrating road. I am thankful for the speech therapists and enjoy applying their techniques. I am just glad he has whole year and a half before he starts kindergarten.
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