The Very Beginning

Our pediatrician was extremely helpful and supportive of us, new parents, with concerns about their son not yet talking more than a few words. We weren't sure if it was because he didn't have much interaction with other children up to 23 months of his life or if there was some other underlying issue that was affecting his ability to speak.  After an in-depth discussion with our son's pediatrician, we all agreed that we had nothing lose and everything to gain by having a special educator that worked with Infants and Toddlers conduct a FREE assessment in our home.  

I guess one could say the journey toward diagnosis and early intervention services officially began in November of 2008 when a Baltimore County Infants and Toddler Program representative knocked on the front door of our home in Owings Mills Maryland.  In that moment, we had committed to what has become our life.  During today's post, I will do my best to recreate our day, allowing you to really connect with and understand what took place during this first assessment. 

Given that he was our first and we had nothing to measure against nor any background in early education, we had no idea what to expect when the special educator showed up at our door that day with a bagful of "goodies" to help guide and engage our son in assessing him as accurately as possible. From what I recall I was nervous, yet hopeful.  The special educator spent a few hours at our home, mostly playing with and/or observing our son and sometimes asking us and/or our nanny questions. 

During the testing, this special educator observed his behaviors, actions and reactions.  He used a few real words, some sign language but mostly jargon and when given directions, to respond, the verbal directions had to be restated.  Additionally, he wandered off and it was difficult to prompt him to participate in most tasks related to find motor and cognitive subtests. Once she had seen and heard enough the session ended and we were told someone would be following up with us via phone on next steps - that is if there were going to be any next steps.  For those that have dealt with early intervention services, especially those supported by the state, know the results are reviewed and scrutinized and sometimes even with there being evidence of a need for services, they are not provided.  If you are a half glass full kind of person then you would agree if I said Thankfully that wasn't the case for us - but if you are a half glass empty kind of person, you may disagree and instead be thinking that it was disappointing we found out that the results indicated there was a greater than 25% delay in numerous areas qualifying him for Infant and Toddler services through Baltimore County.  No matter how you see it, I am grateful that the delays were identified and we were accepted into the program.  The call came about a week later and the verdict was in - 4 out of 6 areas assessed were at least 25% delayed compared to his chronological age at that time in his life.  You may be wondering what that means and so I will share it with you as I dug deep into our archives this morning and found the original documentation detailing this very information.  So here we go………

On par with others at his age:

Auditory Comprehension

Information necessary to receive information

Self Help

Development of skills such as eating, drinking, dressing and sleeping

Gross Motor Skills

Ability to control large body movements such as head control, sitting, crawling, walking

25% or greater delay:

Communication - two parts to this one - auditory comprehensive and expressive communication

A 25% delay in his development of expressive communication

Cognitive

Significantly greater than 25% delay in his development of mental processes related to thinking, remembering and reasoning (ability to convey information)

Social Emotional

Significantly greater than 25% delay in his development of emotional expression, relationships to others, self-concept and play skills

Fine Motor

Significantly greater than 25% delay in his ability to coordinate small muscle movements to perform eye-hand coordination tasks, and to manipulate objects

Sigh, yes ma'am and sir we have a lot going on and for those who know me well know I am an all or nothing type gal, someone focused on "fixing" things, so this was no different except it was a lot different because in order to move forward we had to take a step back and tackle one delay at a time because doing it any other way would be too overwhelming for our son and we would likely find ourselves spinning our wheels and our son spinning out of control with meltdowns due to frustrations caused by all of what we now know is triggering some of his mood swings, inability to communicate, tantrums etc.  The fact is, he wasn't being defiant or acting out just because, there were a considerable number of delays affecting his ability to meet the milestones of others his age.

Nothing about this journey has been easy yet it has been worth it.  Every step forward or back has taken us on this adventure with lots of bumps, twists and turns, leading us down roads that were sometimes dead ends, at times road to nowhere and at other times bringing us steps closer to where we are today.  Had we not taken these risks our son would not be where he is today, thriving in a sometimes cruel yet wonderful world.

My next post will take you deeper into each of the above, bringing you into the world we know and how far we went to help our son along with all the villagers that joined in offering guidance, support, encouragement and sometimes their unwelcome reprimands asking why we would be spending so much time, energy and money figuring out how to provide the best life possible for our son. Stay with me on this journey and you will find out How and Why!