Weekend

Busy, fun weekend in the Budach household.

It started with a Friday night get-together with friends. It’s always nice to get together with teachers that I don’t get to see everyday. Lots of food and laughs with the best chuckle coming from Janeen clicking on the computer screen with her fingernail trying to get pictures to pull up. She was trying to use it like a smart board screen. We laughed a long time about that one! She was like a woodpecker tapping violently on my computer screen because they wouldn’t pop up!

Saturday Connor has soccer and then the kids are going to my parents for a sleep-over (thanks mom and dad!). Mike and I are heading up to Lakeville to have dinner with friends of ours. Should be a nice night out and I am looking forward to seeing them.

Sunday we are taking the kids to see Shrek. I am trying to decide if we should venture up to the cities or Rochester to see it on a nicer screen. We will see how much ambition I have when Sunday rolls around.

Look what happened……..

 

We found the two other eggs at the end of the driveway. I am not sure what happened. Maybe a squirrel? But, we never see squirrels around here since we don’t have mature trees. I don’t know, so sad.

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Monday Noah and I are heading to the hospital. For 5 years he has stuttered. Many, many people don’t know he does it because he covers it very well. He first stuttered when he was 3 years old and we didn’t think much of it. It went away, just like the doctor said it would and we moved on with life. It came back again when he was in Kindergarten but it never seemed to present itself during school, just at home. That always seemed weird to me, but if it had to be one place or the other, I guess I was glad it was at home.

Finally, we decided to have him evaluated by the school speech therapist, just because the issues would subside and be gone (sometimes for weeks) but it would always come back eventually. He qualified (as you only have to have a 5% deviation) and he spent three years going once a week to sessions during school.

Unfortunately, it didn’t really seem to help. The techniques he was taught didn’t really work and pulling him out of class once a week just didn’t seem to be making a difference. Plus, he still had very few stuttering issues at school, so we opted out of speech.

We have never been able to pinpoint a reason for the stuttering, nor have we been able to see any patterns. Sometimes we think it’s connected to something stressful, but then there have been many stressful moments where he hasn’t stuttered at all. He doesn’t fall into the typical categories of people who stuttered (delayed speech when younger, heredity) and so I keep searching for a reason or a way to help.

For about the last month the stuttering has progressed tremendously. It’s the worst we have seen it. He is having moments where he can’t get any words out at all. Of course, this doesn’t make end-of-the-year presentations much fun for someone like Noah (even though these used to be fun for him and presentations were always something he was good at) and it’s not getting better.

I have read many articles and have always been frustrated with the, “we-don’t-know-the-reason-for-stuttering-or-what-exactly-will-help” statements I keep reading. Really? You will research the fact that going to fast food restaurants will cause obesity, but no one researches stuttering and how to help?! Lovely, tell that to my child that can’t give his speech at school and has to stand humiliated in front of his class trying to read his part of a presentation. (That’s what we got to stress about this week, with most night ending with tears)

 

Noah at the all-city track meet this week where he took first place in hurdles!

So, I decided to call his doctor. I had recently heard there was a speech therapy program at the hospital and figured it was time to check out other avenues or help for him. Luckily, I was able to get him into the program to be evaluated already on Monday! Woo Hoo!

So, Monday Noah and I are taking the day OFF! He has not missed one day of school this year and I talked with his teacher (who has been awesome through this whole thing and has made any and every accommodation to make this easier) and she sent him home Friday with work he will miss, so Noah and I will sleep in, go out for lunch, and then hit that evaluation together.

Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this and help my boy. It’s heartbreaking. Not fair, and it needs to end.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

LB