Developmental Assessment

At A's two-year check-up, (he's fine, btw), I talked to our pediatrician about A's speech. He used to use more words than he does now; he used to use two-word phrases and he stopped. This is one of those autism signs that gives me the heebie-jeebies, but he's still very tuned into people and situations, so I thought, no, not autism.

But it's something.

And our super-cool pediatrician agreed that it was odd and so last week we started out on the journey of assessment.

• Tuesday: initial screening: a questionnaire, asked verbally of me, to determine a general development level in five categories: gross motor, fine motor, personal/social (interactions), cognitive (problem solving), communication. He's off the charts for everything but communication, where he's in the 12-24 month category. Ouch. Come back tomorrow to meet with a speech specialist.
• Wednesday: not the speech specialist. This is a more thorough general screening, done by someone who questions me and plays and talks with A. He's in the 30 month range for everything but communication, where he's in the 15-18 month range. Come back tomorrow and meet with another specialist to do a speech assessment, plus we're going to put A into some monitored play groups to make him play with other children and force him to develop communication skills in self-defense.
• Thursday: Speech assessment, general. This is one-hour where the specialist talks mostly to A and some to me and asks him to say things, accomplish tasks, play. He's in the 15-18 month range for expressive communication (him talking) and the 18-21 month range for receptive communication (him listening to what people say).

And so here we are. I figured I'd blog before it got to be too much to describe. He's got the first of the playgroups tomorrow. We have a more in-depth meeting next week with a speech pathologist who will assess him in more detail and set goals.

The last specialist recommended a specific communication-focused play group, an audiology test, and a parenting class for us to be able to help him specifically with communication, but all of those have to be seconded by the speech pathologist.

The audiology test is to make sure he's hearing us since the specialist noted a delay between when A hears a request and when he acts on the request. The suspicion around here is that the delay is the time A takes to decide whether or not he's going to follow a request, but it's good to get him tested anyway.

We're all ambivalent here. I'm glad we got early intervention; I just want to know what's up with him. C still thinks, much like walking, that A just needs to decide he wants to talk and he'll talk. I think assessment is always a good thing, and the earlier the better. But every specialist has taken great pains to tell me: he's smart. He's really really smart. And I say, well, duh.