Ian has been in speech therapy since turning two years old. He has flourished with the right therapists and worked very hard to make great strides. As some of you who follow the blog may know, Ian has had 5 total surgeries, one of which was specifically to improve the hyper nasality in his speech. The procedure, a pharyngeal flap, was probably the most difficult for Ian. He refused to eat while in the hospital, which kept us there a bit longer than we would have liked. However, once home and recovered, he continued to work hard on producing the correct sounds. Once in pre-k, his therapist, who is provided by the school system, constantly told us how impressed she was with his ability to compensate. With his cleft, his upper gum line is not very straight. He is missing two teeth, which have an impact on speech. Ian taught himself different ways to produce the proper sounds. His therapist felt he no longer needed therapy each week, but would do just fine with one session a month. Once in kindergarten, he continued to do well in speech with one session a month. At his evaluation in October, his speech therapist felt Ian no longer needed speech. We were so surprised and excited to hear this good news!
Before he was born, we were told Ian would need speech throughout his childhood. How exciting it was to hear that his hard work had paid off!
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