Speech Therapy
When Adam and Becky Reese adopted triplets Alexandra, Alie, and Mila, they knew some speech therapy intervention would probably be needed. “They were born premature at 30 weeks, so some developmental issues were likely,” Becky explains. “Our plan was early intervention.”
The Reeses also knew exactly where they wanted to take the girls for help: Children’s of Alabama. “There are a lot of options out there for speech therapy, but we wanted the best,” Becky adds. “We knew we would get the best help for our girls at Children’s.”
When the girls were 2 years old, the family started out at Children’s audiology clinic for hearing screenings and other speech development testing to gauge precisely where the girls were developmentally and then moved on to Children’s speech clinic. Results were almost immediate. “Thy went from saying a couple of words to their vocabulary exploding,” Becky says. “It made such a huge difference.”
Especially important for the girls, Becky adds, is that the therapists included them on the therapy and provided them with homework after each session of what they could continue working on at home each week to continue the girls’ growth. “They made sure we knew exactly what the girls did each day and what we needed to work on with them at home,” Becky says. “Their speech was improving every week.”
The girls improved so greatly that after 14 weeks, speech therapy was no longer needed. But after observing their daughters’ and others’ actions in preschool, Becky and Adam felt they needed a little more help as they adjusted to school. “We just went right back to Children’s,” Becky says. “The girls immediately picked right back up with the therapists, who do such a great job at making them comfortable. The therapists make it fun with games for the girls, so they don’t even realize they’re learning while working on their skills.”
Just a few weeks back into speech therapy, and all three girls are already continuing to expand their language skills—so much that the family can’t believe how far they have come in such a short period of time. “We went from the girls not talking and us not being able to understand them to now having full conversations with them, and I completely credit the speech therapists at Children’s for that,” Becky says. “This has been lifechanging for us. It takes a village when it comes to raising children, and I’m so thankful to have Children’s of Alabama as a part of ours.”
