Speech Evaluation - Fort Worth,TX

In my experience, both an occupational therapist and a speech therapist came out to the house to evaluate my son...even though the "of concern" area was speech, they like to do a full evaluation of both speech and gross motor/fine motor skills. They were both wonderful with my son and it was actually a lot of fun for him. Some of the things they had him do were,
- build a tower out of small cubes
- walk up/down stairs
- jump, run
- they asked him to name a variety of objects (took them out of a bag one by one)
- draw a line
- they did some puzzles
- name pictures/ point to pictures in a book
- sing rhymes like twinkle twinkle little star

The whole evaluation took less than an hour. I also received a full write-up of the report in the mail after the eval which was really nice. I'm sure your son will do fine, I really felt the evaluators were well trained in working with children.

My son was evaluated at 24 months. It is amaznig what they can convince a small child to do! They are experts at evaluating very young children, It should be fine! FYI In one year he made SO much progress with his therapist!!

The evaluation, is not intimidating.
It is child, friendly.
Like playing.
Don't worry.

My son had speech therapy.
He LOVED it.
As did I.

If your son is shy or apprehensive, don't worry!
The assessment professionals, are used to that.

if it is through Cooks don't worry. They have some of the best therapists around. I don't know if she is still there but we had Mrs. Lisa Curtis for speech. (we also did occupational) and she is just amazing. We had been told that the best we could do for ds#2 was get him enough skills to move in athe home at 18. Thanks to his speech and occupational and us working together I have a child doing grade 8 work (granted he would be in 9th or 10th possibly but he is delayed) and writing a series of stories and wanting to make them into movies. Not bad for someone that they (NOT Cooks-they are great) said would likely never talk again or be 'normal'

When we did the speech evaluation they did a multitude of things. Hearing tests with headphones on and off with instructions to add or remove toy dinosaurs. Also the standard 'raise your hand if you can hear this pings" test. Pictures held up and have the child identify the picture so they can hear where the childs speech and processing levels are. There was more but it has been a few years. Years later we had to go back and "tweak" a few things. New therapist for us then because "Miss Lisa" had been promoted. I would still ask if it was possible to get her.

They should do a lot of playing things like asking him if he can build a tower like theirs, to copy them playing a silly animal, all kinds of things for him to laugh and giggle and say words if he can. They make it fun and easy on the kids. They should do it similar to this anyway.

My son had a speech evaluation with Our Children's House at Baylor just about 2 months ago and is now is speech therapy. He has a long history of ear infections with two surgeries to date. Ear infections caused hearing loss and the speech delay. My son is 4 and very shy. I completed all the paperwork in advance which made the evaluator happy. She explained that most parents don't fill out the paperwork! I also listed words that he had problems saying. I had a note pad on my counter and when I heard him say something that was wrong I would write it down. I started this when I got the appointment for the evaluation.

My son was a little scared in the lobby waiting for his appointment. He has not been around a lot of kids with disabilities and the lobby had several kids with varying disabilities and some were quiet loud and active. Once he met the evaluator and was taken back with me for the evaluation he seemed fine. She was young (mid twenties?) and very nice. I sat to the side and tried to not interfere during the testing. We were there over 2 hours and I actually took a snack in my purse and I am glad I did because he was able to take a break and was hungry. Even though my son can be very shy, he easily played the “games” for the evaluation. The entire area was child friendly and her office was filled with toys for using during the evaluation. I was shocked that he was able to stay focused and answered all the questions, but at about 2 hours he started to be over with everything.

This was a very beneficial appointment for us. He is now in speech therapy.

My son was tested by the local school district(for developmental delays as well as speech). They just observed and interacted with him while playing with different toys. It was helpful, because they described which sounds he was having problems with, and what the normal age for mastering those sounds should be. They could tell if he had trouble with understanding language or just expressing himself. He qualified for speech therapy, and his speech improved.