Assessing the Assessment

The early intervention people came this week and started the intake process. L's evaluations should be done and an IFSP written by the second week in December. During the private evaluation, which we had to pay for, L was totally fluent. Strange as it seems to say it, I hope she is at her worst for the early intervention people.

Her stuttering is certainly cyclical. She was in a fluent period when she was evaluated, but she is now on the downswing. Her original secondary behaviors have been replaced by new ones: whispering and tilting her head to one side. These behaviors are cuter and more socially acceptable, and so people now don't even realize she's stuttering. In fact, she's so quiet, people don't even realize she's talking.

When she was stuttering at her worst in early October, there was a day she went to the grocery store with me and drew LOTS of attention from people. Every time she started a sentence, she would repeat the initial sound, stuff her hand against her mouth, and allow the pitch and volume of her voice to rise dramatically. People thought she was just yelling to be mischievous. One man even scolded her and said, "Is that you making all that noise?"

Now she does the other extreme: she repeats a sound until her air runs out, and then, rather than inhaling again, she continues to "speak" by moving her mouth but making absolutely no sound. No one else has noticed this but me. It's hard to notice. Sometimes I glance at her and see her little mouth working silently, and I realize she's been trying to talk to me for some time.
She is communicating less, or at least making fewer audible attempts to communicate. When I catch the tail end of one of her "silent stuttering" episodes, I can't understand what she has said because it's either too soft or too distorted by her use of residual air. I ask her to repeat herself, and she just pops her thumb in her mouth and turns away. Too much work. Yeah, baby, I've been there.

Again, it's not so much that she stutters. It's how she stutters that worries me. She just struggles too damn much sometimes, especially for a toddler. I cannot tell you the anger and disappointment I feel when well-meaning people dismiss as mere noisemaking my daughter's efforts to speak; she is only two, but people's reactions to her communication attempts will help shape who she is. I wish I could protect her. I wish I could live the rough parts for her.

And I wish a professional could see her when she is like this. I wonder if they would be so reassuring then. As much as I want L to experience the ease of fluency, I hope she stutters up a storm the next time a speech therapist is near her. I want an assessment based on all the evidence.