I guess I now have two posts related to the same issues as the older one took off on it's own yesterday ...http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/149071/Anyone_with_child_that_has_Apr.html#Post149071 ... but for those who haven't seen my update over there today, we had the private speech evaluation this morning and there IS definitely issue with DS3's mouth. The therapist said either a tactile issue in the back part of his mouth and / or tongue movement issue (at the least) as he clearly cannot move food correctly in his mouth) ... and it's possibly why he doesn't want to use utensils and doesn't want us feeding him with utensils because then he loses the control over where he puts the food in his mouth with his fingers. She watched him eating a banana today and saw how he was shuffling it around with his finger.
As for actual speech, he makes sounds correctly when it's just letter sounds but when it comes to speaking words and sentences he again makes tries to create all the sounds in the front of his mouth just like when he's eating food. So seems like speaking is actually uncomfortable for him and he's only getting the hang of it as he's slowly starting to master the movements of his tongue better. She did say that if in fact the tongue and facial movement is what's causing it (we ran out of time and she wants to work with him more to really get to the bottom of this) it could also be related to the other motor issues he has.
so, all in all pretty good news as we finally have something to go by!
And now I have to brag a little about my boy. It's not a high IQ sort of achievement but more so a brag about him figuring out how to compensate for one of his issues. He's been really wanting to play with DS4.5's Leapfrog Clickstart game system (has a keyboard and mouse that you have to use) but because of the limited use of his hands, he's never been able to use the mouse to move it around and I THOUGHT he doesn't get the connection between the mouse and the cursor on the screen ... well today I watched him and when he got to the place where he needed to use the mouse he took it off the pad, turned it upside down and used his THUMB on the mouse sensor to manipulate the cursor and then clicked on what he needed! THAT'S MY BOY! lol So, he clearly did get how the mouse and cursor are connected, just wasn't able to use the actual mouse and compensated for it quite well!
