Anticlimax

And with that, we're done with speech therapy.

Finn has been receiving in-home speech therapy once a week since mid-July - so three and a half months. During that time, no fewer than four sessions were skipped: once because Finn had a cardiology appointment, once because the SLP was on vacation, once because she was sick, and once because . . . well, she just never showed up. In that three and a half months, she was on time maybe three times. All the other times, she was anywhere from ten to twenty-five minutes late, and last week, she showed up fifteen minutes early (which is just as inconvenient and annoying as being late). She often brought along a student/assistant who sat here looking extremely bored each time she was here, fidgeting, sitting with her chin resting on her fist, only interacting with Finn at the SLP's specific direction, and just generally giving the impression that she was just putting in her time.

Here's what speech therapy consisted of for us: playing with toys. A variety of toys that the SLP would bring. Nothing special, though, just toys. Musical toys are a big hit with Finn, so lots of musical toys. Singing songs and doing animated hand movements with the songs.

That's it.

No oral-motor exercises of any kind. And honestly, I'm really not convinced that he'd even be receptive to oral-motor exercises at this point, so my saying this is not a complaint, just an observation.

My point is that nothing - absolutely nothing - happened during three and a half months of speech therapy that we don't already do with Finn.

On the list of positives, the SLP had a really good rapport with Finn. He liked her a lot, and would often crawl into her lap and give her his famous great big hugs.

He is most definitely using more signs now than he was three and a half months ago, and more spoken words (though they are difficult to understand, and I doubt anyone outside of his immediate family would understand the words he says), but I think it's just the natural progression for Finn. He'd be exactly where he is now without the speech therapy.

So I'm disappointed, not because it didn't yield more results, but because I just don't know what the point was. This SLP is supposedly THE BEST. She's very reputable and well known in the community among parents who have children with speech and language delays. I'm not sure, at this point, exactly what criteria makes a SLP good at what they do.

Anyway, we're done now. Her contract with us is up as of today, so this morning was our last session (she showed up twenty-five minutes late, and with her bored assistant). When we said goodbye, that was it - no ceremony or emotion. Not that I expected any.

Sigh.