Average Again

James's hearing therapist sent over the results from the standardized assessments she had done.  The norms for the test are for children without hearing loss.  For the expressive and receptive language, James is scoring right around the 50th percentile. For articulation, he's at only the 36th percentile, although that test wasn't particularly reliable because James was saying the words very quietly, so it was hard to tell what sounds he was or was not pronouncing. 

On the one hand, the fact that his language skills are on par with children who don't have hearing loss is great.  On the other hand, that does not reflect his potential.  (I am still really angry at his ear doctor for costing us so many months of lost hearing time.  James will catch up, but he didn't need to be falling behind in the first place.)

He has been talking a lot at home recently.  He is definitely in a somewhat contrary phase, but mostly just in what he says:  his favorite sentence these days is, "No, I don't want to [whatever you just asked him to do]."  Of course, he generally does this in his typical cheerful way. He also answers "no" to most questions, but he frequently doesn't mean it, and contradicts himself in the same sentence.  For instance, in response to something like, "Do you want a cracker?", he'll say, "No, I want a cracker."

He loves watching Dora the Explorer these days, and happily participates by saying "map" or "backpack" or "Swiper" and pointing out all the locations.  He and Matthew were singing the "we did it!" song in their bedroom the other day.  :)

Our favorite recent sentence was when we took him out of his high chair, and he climbed right back in and said, "I want some more food!  On a plate!"  (Of course we obliged!  He then ate two or three goldfish crackers and then was ready for his bath.)  He's been doing pretty well with eating (including half a taco the other night).  I suspect it's because we scheduled an appointment with his feeding therapist; even though he doesn't know about it, he always seems to do better when there's an appointment with K on the horizon!  (The last couple of times, though, we've cancelled the appointment in light of his progress, which we won't do this time.)