Apraxia

A.P.R.A.X.I.A. Apraxia. It's a good Scrabble word.

This has been a busy week for us, filled mainly by a plethora of doctor visits. Today's was to the speech pathologist at the hospital for an evaluation of Buddy. We had him in speech therapy for about 5 months last year and then lost ST when the therapist quit First Steps. A developmental therapist has been coming since September but she works more on helping him communicate with signs than getting him to actually form words.

I set up the evaluation at the hospital because I've heard they have a fairly intensive program that helps kids with a variety of speech and language pathologies. Although he has about 10-15 signs that he uses and has recently started saying "ma ma" and "da da," I want to be sure we're doing everything we can for him and that something other than the known speech delays with WS isn't also hindering his expressive language abilities.

The speech pathologist was very kind and thorough. She spent about 1.5 hours playing with Buddy, asking questions and jotting down notes on her intake form. She'll be sending us her report in a few weeks. At the end, she said that based on what she has seen, it's possible that Kieran has a form of developmental speech apraxia. The good news is that there are several STs at the hospital who specialize in treating apraxia. So now we wait to see if our insurance will cover the therapy and for a therapist to have an opening in her schedule.

I'm very thankful that we live nearby such a good hospital and have so many services available to us.

PT and DT

On Friday we had a visit from a physical therapist. Although I had thought Buddy was doing fine with his gross motor skills, the evaluators at his yearly IFSP (individual family service plan) marked him 1.5 standard deviations below average. I was a bit surprised but decided to add a PT to his lineup just to keep tabs on him.

So it was she who came Friday morning. After watching him for an hour, she determined that he was doing mostly what he should be doing for his age and suggested that a monthly visit (instead of weekly) would be fine. I agreed, and so we'll see her again at the end of October.

The next visitor came a few hours later. Our speech therapist recently quit First Steps and since there are now only 2 STs servicing our area, we're again on a waiting list. (Buddy still isn't talking, so ST is definitely something I'd like to keep up with.) In lieu of a ST, our service coordinator suggested adding a developmental therapist, who supposedly can also help with speech.

And so the DT came Friday afternoon to spend an hour with Kieran. To be frank, I found her a bit annoying (mainly in the way she talked), but for the sake of continued therapy in this area, I'll keep her around. For awhile anyway. Our geneticist also mentioned at a recent appointment that he could refer us to the speech pathology division at Children's, which I may follow up on.

First evaluation

The therapists came today to evaluate Buddy--one was an oocupational therapist and the other was a developmental therapist. They spent a little over an hour watching and playing with him, scribbling notes and asking questions about him. They said that by virtue of his WS diagnosis, he was automatically eligible for the First Steps program, which I was happy to hear. Overall, they said that he's doing well. The only delays they saw were in his fine motor and verbal skills. And on those counts, they said the delays weren't because he wasn't capable of developing those areas, but just that he hadn't yet developed those areas. The next step is to meet with a coordinator, formulate a plan, and choose the therapists and therapies we want.