Talking to a two year old

At the beginning of April, Cooper had a speech evaluation. The speech pathologist said that he failed the evaluation, but not enough to qualify for services. She said he measured three months behind on both his receptive (understanding what you tell him) and expressive (talking) communication. This could be easily explained by the months of fluid on his ears, and then the intensive physical therapy he has been undergoing for his motor delay. She gave me some recommendations of what we can do to help his speech develop.

In the last six weeks, his speech has blossomed. Every day he has new words. Walking to church today, he pointed at a tree, "Tree!" He said "thank you" today for the first time. He has started using two word sentences. I cut a piece of cake the other day for a snack, and he looked at it and said, "Cake! Bite please!" He watched me make my fried egg with toast and cheese this morning, and said, "Toast? Cheese?" with such a tone of intense betrayal since he was eating mini-pancakes for breakfast, and toast and cheese are two of his favorite foods.

He is picking up new nouns about as fast as I can teach them. I expect to hear him say, "Go put that back" and "Come back here" any day now. And hopefully, "I love you."