I'm a happy mama

I shall give some history about miss.s. As a baby she was perfect. She rarily cried or made a sound but did smile and responded to her name and laughed when tickled. She also said mama, dada and roger roger(star wars) at 1 year. She also was crawling at 6 months and walking by 1. She was developing at a normal rate. When she was around 7 months I started a home daycare. I did that for 2.5 years and never had she tried to socialize with the other children, participate in activies or even attempt to sing songs. She was always off in her own little world. Whatever thats fine, she was still very young but I was suprised that she had ZERO interest in anything. Fast foward to April2010 and she was not talking and still babbling. At this point she was almost 3. We had her first speech assessment at TykeTalk. She was diagnosed with moderate/severe speech production delay. So While on the waitlist they gave me face exercises to do with her as we suspected something was going on with her jaw as she was doing weird movements. During that assessment I was asked questions about how well she eats. Up untill about 2 she would choked and gagged on almost everything and I was continually saving her life because she wouldnt chew the food. It didn't take long to make the connection.  17 weeks of speech therapy through TykeTalk and I can happily say my kid is talking and we can understand most of what she says :)

Now we are facing new concerns. Miss.S is a VERY energetic child. Often impulsive and destructive to objects around our home, struggles to focus except on a couple activities(obsesses about her puzzles)and theres been other behaviours that ive wondered about sometimes extreme and sometimes not. During her time at TykeTalk the speech pathologist finally, after struggling to get her to sit still and do the activities, reccommended that she gets a referal for a developmental assessment. I have always had the gut feeling that something was "off" with her but everyone else who doesnt have to be with the kid 24/7 kept telling me "oh shes fine if you take her to the dr they will drug her blah blah blah". I was relieved when finally someone else saw what I saw! I was made to feel terrible for thinking something was different about her. Now I realize it was kinda my fault everyone thought she was perfectly normal because if I knew she was having one of those days where she would get crazy hyper and act up nonstop I just wouldnt take her anywhere and very picky that we have a strict routine because she would be impossible to handle if we broke the routine. Noone was around to see what I live with.  She's been on the waitlist for that assessment for a year because we suspect ADHD. Theres also concerns about how she socializes with other children. She does not directly intereact with them but more plays with them but doing her own thing. Kinda how toddlers play and this has concerned me for some time and I take her to a play group every week outside of school to encourage her to play with other children.

Yesturday I had a meeting at Miss.S school with the teacher, early learning person and the speech pathologist. I was a nervous wreck waiting for this meeting. I've heard so many horror stories from other parents of the schools not being helpful and whatnot. This was not the case. The speech pathologist has been reassessing her over the past couple weeks and is working on a program for her for at school aswell is willing to send home some of the activities as I would like to reinforce what shes doing at the school. The teacher has also noted her lack of focus, how she obsesses about certain things aswell as how she doesn't directly interact with her friends. They did up a report about not only the speech but the social and attention issues for when sophia is assessed. I'm also happy to report that sophia is now in the nomal percentile for speech and language although understanding questions she scored in the 5th percentile but the rest she was scoring around 35th percentile. I realize thats the low end of average but she started at 0 so we are very proud of her.

So many people make comments such as "I don't know how you can handle being with her all day by yourself" but really I'm used to it. Its exhausting work(I wont lie I do sometimes need a break and I do sometimes get frustrated) but I knew becoming a parent was not going to be easy. Her different needs is not what she is, just a part of her and I don't mind. She's healthy, brilliant, happy, hilarious, shes is great with her baby brother and is always helping, she stands up for her friends when she see's they are being mistreated and she's a sweety and I adore her, crazyness and all.

Now excuse me while I go clean glue off my coffee table.