Early Intervention and Speech Evaluation

We had Grace's six month evaluation with Early Intervention. She has been receiving behavior therapy and OT with them once a week since April. Grace has grown so much and is doing awesome! We are cutting back the services to every other week for a little while and then will move to once a month finishing around her 3rd birthday. I really don't feel she needs anymore from the therapists (I do what I need to do with her daily), but I hate to take them away from her. It has taken a long time, but Grace asks for them now and looks forward to them coming over to "play". However, I will be very happy to have my Tuesdays back:)

Today we went for her follow up speech evaluation with CHOP. The speech pathologist has worked with many IA kids and totally "gets" Grace and the situation. I really trust and respect this woman. She jokingly asked why we were even there! Grace is speaking in complete sentences, uses contractions and pronouns correctly and uses phrases such as "safe and sound". After we were there a while, one of the questions seemed a little difficult to me for a 2 1/2 year old. We were told they were now on the 6 year old questions!!!!! They had to keep going until Grace got 7 wrong! She said, "We want her to start getting some wrong at this point." We were there a while!!! Overall, Grace did fabulous, with the exception of her being very active. I knew from the moment she woke up it would be one of those "sensory days". Some days she is so mellow and "chilled out" and other days she just isn't.

The best news out of the speech evaluation was that she expects Grace to do wonderful in preschool next year!!! With Grace's sensory needs and history of liking to control things, I have worried about that next stage of life. So, I loved hearing that! She also discussed how it is very common for IA kids to have language or learning issues develop during elementary school, but she feels Grace will be an exception, not the rule! Phew!!! I love good news!