The triplets are all getting therapy through our county’s early intervention program. They have both a general special education/developmental therapist and a speech therapist working with them. The great news is that the triplets are doing great and have reached the vast majority of their developmental milestones. The therapists were kind of curious about some of the idiosyncracies in their development, though… they don’t really imitate, for example… we’ve been doing sign language with them since they were 6 months old and now, at 23 months old, they don’t imitate a single sign, nor do they respond to a single sign. They used to play peek-a-boo, but only in their high chairs – not elsewhere (the girls just recently started doing it elsewhere, too).
They are also pretty far behind in their speech/language milestones, enough that at their 15 month appointment, their general pediatrician noted that we should get them evaluated and get them speech therapy services ASAP.
Since we happen to have an “in” with an excellent developmental pediatrician (for the J-man), I ran the therapists’ questions by Dr. S. His first recommendation was to continue with the speech therapy, but also to get the triplets’ speech/language development formally assessed on either the Mullen Scales of Early Learning, or similar after a solid 6-8 months of speech therapy (that would be… now). He had a few other suggestions, and did say he’d be happy to see the triplets if we thought that would be beneficial (this is a great gift from him – he’s not currently accepting new patients). He said we should definitely talk more after we get the assessment. This all seemed perfectly reasonable.
So… we started the assessments on Friday and finished all except Ellie’s receptive language assessment, which I’m not in the least bit concerned about. The girls, unsurprsingly, came out just about where we expected them to – about 6 months behind expressively (which means they’ve made huge progress since they started speech therapy in January) and only a few months behind receptively (assuming Ellie comes out where we expect her to once we finish her receptive assessment next week).
Sam’s assessment was more significant, however. He tested out as 4 months for expressive language and 11 months for receptive language. Wow.
I talked with Ye Olde Developmental Pediatrician and did tell him that Sam’s 2 year check up with our regular pediatrician is next month, reminded him that we’re still doing weekly speech therapy with all the triplets, and asked him what he suggests we do from here. He said that he thinks it’s important that we remain vigilant with the intensive speech therapy and he suggested we meet and talk more after their 2 year check up. That certainly seemed reasonable. I trust YODP, and I trust our general pediatrician. So I believe we won’t be led astray by either of them (and it happens that they are former practice partners and good buddies of each other, so they trust each other, too).
I’m quite certain this will resolve over time and that we’ve got the right professionals on our team. It’s just… more stuff to do.
Well, it’s always gotta be something, right? I wasn’t having nearly enough fun these days anyway.
ChezPerky 
You are certainly doing all the right things for them.
Do they have their own way of communicating with each other?
Hope the therapy brings them forward in great strides without too much tearing out of hair.
Bea
Good to hear from you! I’ve missed your posts.
Glad to hear the girls I’ve made such great strides! Obviously I have only been with Sam for very short amounts of time but it seemed to me that his receptive language was quite good. Not that I’m an expert or even close, of course.
What does YEOD think is going on?
Send me an email, if possible. I’m thinking of you!!!
Also… should we try to plan a September get together? Maybe at a park? Would love to see you all! =)
The Bailey rather than the Mullen is more speech-specific and sensitive. I know this from our teams work at San Diego Children’s Hospital some years ago with our local developmental evaluation clinic.
Sorry about the typo up above… it should say “have” made such great strides… but I’m sure you figured that out. =) I must start reading my comments BEFORE sending them!!!
Yeah, Mackenzie’s pretty far behind too. She’s 20 months old, 18.5 adjusted. She just had her 1-year Early Intervention eval and they did the Mullen on her; she tested at 6-8 months for expressive, and 11 months for receptive. But I don’t think they must take into account her signing – because unlike yours, she DOES do sign language – like crazy – she uses at leas 15 signs on a regular basis, and more if prompted! She even just started putting 2 signs together on rare occasions, but totally in context. Anyway, up to this point, she hadn’t been receiving speech therapy – just the general early intervention developmental services, but they’re going to start providing speech therapy.
Do you have any male math/ science geniuses in your family? I ran a play therapy program in a pre-school for a while and I noticed that boys who had this in their family often had delayed language but later caught up and had some amazing pre-math abilities. Good luck, being a mom is so worrying.
We have Seth’s first meeting with someone from the program tomorrow. Curious to see how this is going to go… It sounds like you’ve got a great team behind you, and things are moving in the right direction.
Good luck with it all. It is great that your dev ped is so accommodating. I would think there is tremendous potential for them to catch up over time, especially with quality intervention. I do find it interesting that they don’t imitate. I’ll be curious to read what any of the professionals they see can make of that.
Just catching up with you babes – we’re in similar places with the development, and I’m so sorry about the layoffs.
Let’s hear it for 2009 jogging off stage left PRONTO.
(also – I can haz password?)
Oy, it’s always something. Here’s hoping the next year sees a speedy climb up the charts and you will have less appt-demanding evals at age 3.
[I saw that today was a bad day, over on FB, and did a bit of hurried math, and wanted to send you a cyber-hug. No matter whether it has anything to do with anything, or not.]