Every mother has a special place in her heart for her first born. Roman is no exception! My baby boy is now 3 years old! He’s finally really embraced his big brother role and life is way easier because of it!
But while I like to think my kids are perfect and the smartest and the best things ever created, like every person does, they have their struggles. I didn’t realize until Roman was around 18 months old that his speech was not as developed as it should have been. I kept saying, Oh, he’ll start picking up words. He’ll start talking soon. Until he wasn’t.
So at age 2, I took him to a speech therapist who taught me all types of exercises to do with him. I learned tools to communicate with my child. Do you know how amazing that feels!?! I was so appreciative for not only the therapist but also my friends who made me aware that Roman needed help and myself for accepting the help. Sometimes our children need a little extra support to overcome their own challenges.
Roman was diagnosed with apraxia, a motor speech delay. For the past 10 months, we’ve been at speech therapy twice a week and boy has it helped! We changed the way we communicate in our house to support his development. We’ve completely eliminated all the extra words, all extra distractions to the most simple phrases. And Roman has made tremendous progress; it feels like he now talks all day long! Thank goodness we addressed it when we did. Had we waited longer to start speech therapy, it would’ve been even more difficult to change the patterns and habits.
Having gone through this, I realize how common speech delays are for children. It’s easy to say, just like I did, it’ll work itself out soon. But it’s on us mamas to be humbled and take necessary steps to help our children grow in the best way possible.
