Goals

Last Friday, the intake coordinator at The Facility (as the place where Tad’s speech therapy is coordinated shall henceforth be known as) asked me, “So, what kind of goals are you looking for Tad to achieve in speech therapy?”

Talk about a loaded question.

The bottom line is, I just want Tad to talk. I want to hear what’s going on in that hard head of his (and he does have a hard head. I swear his skull is made of metal – though he’s definitely proven that the rest of his bones are not). I want to hear his opinion in words, not just pointing and the endless climbing-and-running-off-with stuff to know what his wants and needs are. I want to hear him call his sister by name. I want to hear “Mommy” more often from him.

I want to hear him to say “I love you.”

So, the intake coordinator and I developed a few (hopefully achieveable) goals:

1) Get Tad to use two-word sentences – something which he does very rarely, if ever. The few three-word sentences that have ever passed through his lips have stopped me dead in my tracks each time (I think that has happened precisely twice).

2) Get him to express preferences – what does he want for breakfast? He can’t always want the same thing his sister does each morning. What does he want to play with – besides his Cars? What movie does he want to watch – besides Cars? I see a trend here…

Number 2 dovetails into Number 2a) Getting Ane to shut her mouth so that Tad can talk. I am totally convinced that half of getting him to express his opinion will be getting her to keep her opinions to herself.

Those are our starting goals (#2a is completely my issue and not the speech therapist’s), to be adjusted as Tad progresses through speech therapy. Now I just really want to get started, even though I’ve been told that it might take a couple of weeks – the therapist he’s been assigned to has no space this week, and next week is their spring break. In fact, I’m still waiting for her to call me to set up appointment #1. If I don’t hear from her by lunchtime today, I’m calling and leaving a message…

CALL ME. Let’s get Tad started. Now.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 12:27 am and is filed under Children, Speech Therapy Saga.
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