My dear friend, Diana, invited me to attend a PTA meeting tonight. While Ethan isn’t yet a student at Glenn Oak Elementary School, he will be next fall so I thought I’d go see what the PTA meetings were all about. It started out as I had expected by addressing various areas of interest, such as financial issues, fund raisers, individual class developments, scheduled events, etc. However, tonight they had a guest speaker, Mrs. Hampton, a speech pathologist at the school. Of course, I was the naïve parent that had no idea of what this person did for a living. I figured she was going to present ideas about getting the children oriented with writing and presenting speeches. After all, this is considered an important part of school curriculums these days, or so I have heard. However, I was surprised to learn that this was not the case. She was actually there to present a PowerPoint presentation about how language development can be affected by chronic otitis media, specifically the language characteristics associated with chronic otitis media. This immediately caught my attention since Ethan had suffered many middle ear infections in the past. Still, I had never suspected him of having any developmental problems. I mean, sure, his language isn’t perfect, but he’s only five years old. Isn’t this normal?
After listening intently to the presentation, I began to worry about Ethan. Like any other caring mother, I only want what’s best for him. Only, I still didn’t know what I should do. I waited around until all of the other parents had left and then approached Mrs. Hampton. She gave me the phone number to a local audiologist, John Sutton, and advised me to have Ethan’s hearing evaluated. I’m going to give him a call first thing tomorrow morning.