We recently received Krassi's new "plan of care" from his private speech therapist, and although I rarely pay too much attention to these for either boy because we already know the plan - keep on working to help these boys achieve the highest level they can in all areas of their development.
But there was one detail in Krassi's that stood out to me: one year ago, his expressive communication scored "solid at 3 months." And that was about right - he was able to communicate about as well as a three-month old infant.
This year, measured by the same scale, he's "fairly solid at 8 months, emerging to 12 months."
Understanding that the real story is quite a bit more complex than that, I'm still delighted that in the last year he's shown a six-month gain in his ability to communicate!
To be at a 3-month level at almost 10 years old, and a year later to be at 8 months, going on 12 months, sounds like a little boy who's most likely got the potential to keep moving in that direction!
We've been trying a variety of communication options for Krassimir - picture communication, vocalizations, "cheap talk" machines, and sign, and repeatedly, sign language is the method that seems to best resonate with his abilities. He currently signs "more," and usually it means "more" but can also mean "all done." (Yes, not very helpful.) We have seven other signs we're working on with him: all done, yes, eat, drink, my turn, music, play. Not a single one of these is something that he can do independently, and with much guidance, verbal prompting, and hand-over-hand assistance, we are sometimes seeing him possibly using 2 or 3 of them.
But I'm hoping that maybe another year from now, we'll be able to look back at this and marvel at how far we've come.
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