Assessment update

The Little Empress, avoiding the camera

Yesterday, The Hubs ™ and I attended The Little Empress’ assessment meeting to review how she’s progressed since we set some specific goals for her in June. Overall, her progress has been steady and consistent. Her gross motor and fine motor skills test at nearly 36 months old (!!); her cognitive and self-help abilities test at her current age level; but her social and expressive speech continue to be issues. At this point, she has more than a 50% delay in her expressive speech, which I wasn’t surprised about. What I was surprised about is that she is still testing at approximately a 50% delay socially. It is really sort of a head scratcher — she’s very friendly, she acknowledges that are kids around and she has some special friends that she shows appropriate affection with but she still doesn’t initiate play. New goals were set and now TLE has a bunch of new stuff to work on.We also confirmed that, yes, TLE will be at the center-based program until she ages out next March.

During the meeting, I was reminded about how absolutely lucky we’ve been with the county. When I joined a local special needs list, there was a lot of talk about how to advocate for your child and to push back when county denies services. Budgets are strained and they tend to try to cut corners were they can. We have a passionate case worker who advocates hard for her cases. She confessed to me that, if we had lived eleswhere chances are that TLE would have only gotten limited speech therapy which wouldn’t have helped her much at all. TLE’s speech therapist asked about the possibility of the county paying for more intensive speech therapy with TLE, considering her delays. I had already checked with our health insurance and they will not cover speech therapy that is not attributable to medical condition.

On the way home, The Hubs ™ and I discussed more things I can do at home with TLE to try to help her. That expressive speech component is important. I try my best not to compare TLE to other kids, reminding myself that she’ll gain speech at her own pace and that above all else, it is most important that she is healthy and happy. But it is still heartbreaking to realize that TLE isn’t like other kids; speech will be difficult for her for some time. While I know she’ll catch up eventually, I don’t want this to affect her self-esteem in the long run. And I know that the best way to do that is to continue to do what we’ve been doing: not comparing her to others, helping her when/where we can, using positive reinforcement and just loving and supporting her, no matter what.

Her therapists and teachers also brought up two more issues that we’re probably going to be dealing with for awhile. The first is TLE’s willful stubbornness. She simply refused to comply with many of the tests. The OT and her assistant had to jump through a lot of hoops to get her to do the gross motor tests. The program director, whom TLE loves, could not get her to comply with a simple game of peekaboo. She knew she could do it but TLE simply crossed her arms and shut her out. STUBBORN!! It is almost cute now but man oh man, I see a bumpy road ahead with her. TLE is very much about doing things her way. If it wasn’t her idea, it is hard to get her to go along with it. (I’d love to blame The Hubs ™ for this personality trait but sadly, I think she gets it from both of us. Add on top she’s an Aries cusp and we’ve got our hands full!!)

Another thing that the brought up was her attention span. Of course, toddlers don’t have much of an attention span to begin with but TLE’s lack of attention span also made it difficult for them to complete tests in a timely manner. Very easily distracted, she’d flit from activity to activity. And when she was done, she was done.

Oi. We’ve got our work cut out for us.

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