The problem with ending up on an unexpected road is that there generally aren't any maps to help you find your way. It's like when you take a wrong turn on a trip, and rather than recalculating, your GPS just tells you to make a U-Turn as soon as possible. In our case, we were in bumper to bumper traffic, with no exit in sight. Forward was the only direction we could go.
We took our time to mourn for the expectations that we had. The Mommy Guilt cropped up full force, leaving me to wonder if I had managed to breastfeed successfully, or if we had stimulated her in some areas more, or if I had done something different while I was pregnant, etc. - would we still be experiencing this? The answer is likely "Yes," but that doesn't stop the irrational nature of thought.
According to the initial evaluations, Lyric was speaking at the level of a 12 month old. She was socially at the level of an 18 month old, and her emotional responses were also behind. Her motor skills were right on track, and her cognitive skills were at the level of a 30 month old. After some initial discussion, we decided that we would focus on developing her speech, with the thinking that bringing her speech in line would cause the other areas to follow suit.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, we were in the process of moving from our apartment. We had found a house to rent a few miles away, but those few miles put us both over the county line, and in a different school district. After making a few phone calls, we figured out that we would be switching to a new Early On program, so the initial work with Lyric would be lost. This, however, actually ended up working in our favor.
Once we had gotten everything squared away in our new house, we began regular sessions with Melissa, our new speech therapist. Right off the bat she was confused about why our previous county had scored Lyric so low in so many areas, because she didn't think Lyric was that far behind. We suspect that this is because Lyric "got along" with Melissa a lot more than the therapist from our previous county. She was more comfortable with her overall, and this made her open up more for the first encounter. A more open child means that more skills will be shared. This is one of the first lessons we learned.
After seeing Lyric twice, Melissa informed us that she felt a more appropriate diagnosis for Lyric would be what are called "Splintered Skills." These are skills that are behind, on track, and ahead - depending on what they are. Rather than focus on a broad spectrum of bringing Lyric's speech up to speed, she wanted to focus more on each of the skill areas that needed improving. The theory here was that once we got those at a more even level, the speech skills would follow suit. This was a much more personal approach than our previous county was going to take, hence our move working out in our favor.
Since Early On is a very parent led program, we were given "homework" to do between each session. We were supposed to try to force her to speak, by making it so that she couldn't get her favorite food or toys without asking. We selected target words, and learned the sign language for those words, to repeat and try to get Lyric to use on a consistent basis. Melissa would come by every 2 weeks to see how things were progressing, and make additional suggestions for things we could add to help her. All of this led to an overwhelming amount of frustration for all of us, because Lyric didn't seem to be absorbing any of the information through those methods. She was continuing to learn words and skills, but none of it seemed to be from what we were supposed to be using. The sabotage of her environment was a bust, because she just figured out how to get at the things we were keeping from her, rather than trying to ask us to get them. She also seemed completely oblivious to the sign language we were trying to teach her.
It was around her fourth visit that Melissa suggested we try something different. At each session, we mentioned things that we just brushed off as "Lyric Quirks," and Melissa recognized as Sensory Processing issues. She suggested that we have an occupational therapist (OT) come over to evaluate Lyric, and come up with ways that we could try to address these issues. It was Melissa's opinion that Lyric wouldn't really begin to learn until her sensory needs were satisfied, and to us this made sense. She described it as a traffic jam in Lyric's brain. Nothing would move unless we could figure out a "Lyric Way" of directing the traffic.
We set up an appointment to have Tiffany, an Early Special Ed. instructor, come over and evaluate Lyric with a list that is called a Sensory Panel. Her advice and determinations would dictate how we were going to proceed with the program for Lyric. In a sense, she would be our first tour guide. I was hopeful about making more improvements quickly, but what ended up happening was finding the beginning of another road to take.
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