Severe Speech Delays: Chelsea's Story Part 3

Part 3: Where Are We Now? 

I almost forgot to come back and finish up with sharing our journey! You can read the beginning of our story here and part two here.

Like I said before after almost a year, Chelsea's speech progress was quite slow and her therapist was starting to question if the surgery had done the job. After checking in with the surgeon and reassuring her that things were as they should be we kept plugging along.

Several times a week we went to speech therapy and Terry would work with Chelsea, playing games, using a mirror and lots of other ways to try to get her sounds coming. Then one day it just seemed to click. Terry had Chelsea say a work with a k sound and she actually got it!

Excited, she tried some others and Chelsea was nailing every one of them. Finally a break through! After that  day sounds started coming easier and with less effort. Her words were still not extremely clear but there was progress.  I remember the first time I heard her say mommy instead of mama. You can just imagine how that felt!

That doesn't mean she still wasn't struggling because she was. She was still afraid to talk to people and having just started talking at the age of five, she was being made fun of in kindergarten because she basically sounded like a baby to the kids around her. Sometimes I would hear about it from her when she came home crying that kids wouldn't play with her at recess. Another time I heard from a friend's mom that her daughter had stuck up for Chelsea when kids started making fun of her.

A lot of what happened that year in kindergarten led us to the decision to homeschool. Now several years after that surgery she has almost all of her letter sounds, is talking more to people and making friends from our homeschool group and church! We are still working on a lot of grammar issues and still waiting for the "r" sound to make it's appearance but I'm so thrilled with the outcome and how far she has come! I'm so proud of my kind hearted, artistic, loving Chelsea! I know we went through all of this for a reason. God has a plan for it all! I know too that someone needed to read this and be encouraged by our story.

I would love to hear your journey with speech delays. Feel free to  email me at jacquiel16@yahoo.com share here in the comments or click on the contact tab at the top of the page.