"I don't want to get your hopes up..."

We recently had a community speech therapist come over to work with Jake. There had been a year waiting list.

She came over for an hour one day, then an hour the next day, doing an "evaluation" of his "communication".

When she was finished and we asked her how he was doing and when he might talk. She said, "I don't want to get your hopes up but someday he might make word approximations."

Trust me, you didn't get our hopes up.

Then she said she wanted us to enroll him in a program that would build a facilitated communication device - something with pictures he could show us that would tell us what he wanted.

We said, "We want him to talk." We declined her advice.