Frustrated with the System...Already

So Maddox had his speech evaluation yesterday. He now is labeled with developmental speech delay. That is, until he's in speech therapy for a while and they find out more. It "could" be Apraxia. Again, even if it is, we won't know for a while. So we need to start speech therapy. So not only am I frustrated because I wanted to start this process months ago, but now it's been brought to my attention that speech therapy (if not for a medical reason such as autism) isn't covered by our insurance. The insurance we pay over $250 a month for. It's the insurance provided by Shawn's employer, so it's not like we had a choice. Every year we pay more for insurance and they cover less. Speech therapy starts at $70 an hour (usually more), and he won't only need to go once a week. So I've been put in contact with the Infant Toddler Network for Children with Special Health Care Needs. This is an Early Intervention Resource that is supposed to pay for his speech therapy until he turns 3. Who really knows what happens after he turns 3, probably get shuffled to another agency, or maybe the public school system. Right now we wait. How long I don't know. A Family Resource Coordinator should be in touch with me to set up an Individual Family Service Plan. First they have to see if we qualify. The lady couldn't tell me when we'd hear from our Family Resource Coordinator because apparently most insurance doesn't cover speech therapy (unless for a medical reason) so there are a lot of "kiddos" waiting. Great news for me to hear. On the plus side, it's probably better that my insurance doesn't cover it because even if they did cover it, they only cover 20 visits per year. If he needs to go twice a week that wouldn't even cover three months. So while we wait we practice our "games" with Maddox, the games that the speech therapist taught us yesterday, and hope that they will be enough to help for how ever long we need to wait. Hopefully we don't wait longer than a couple of weeks. The games seem to be helping so far, we're working on sounds right now because you have to have the sounds down before you can make words. He has the most difficulty with the sounds that come from the back of the mouth. However, progress has been made, in the last 24 hours Maddox has produced three of the sounds we've been working on - boo, aaahhhh, and vroom. So I'm off to buy more supplies and candy for our games. Candy as bribery? Yes! The therapist said she's only met a couple of kids who would "work for free" and Maddox definitely isn't one of them.