I will begin by announcing that we officially have 2-year-old little boys residing under our roof. We had a wonderful (and quiet) birthday celebration and I promise a post as soon as possible.
I thought I would give an update on some of the developmental issues we have been experiencing over the last year. I have a few updates.
The boys are both still enrolled in speech therapy. They both go to private therapy 1x a week for 30 minutes and then they get speech therapy through the state program every other week for 60 minutes. The boys seem to get a lot out of both sessions but we are fans of the private speech therapy simply because of the 1:1 attention each boy gets from the therapist. But it also costs us a significant amount of money each week and while we are so fortunate that my health insurance covers the session I have a high deductible plan that has the potential to make things a bit complicated once my employer funded HRA (health reimbursement account) runs out. So we are just taking things day by day. We have also enrolled the boys in a program called Tiny Talkers over the summer. It will be 1x a week for 60 minutes and it will be a program led by a speech therapist but it will be a small group setting with other kids. This is also a bit costly but we think it will prepare the boys for preschool in the fall. Preschool? I know! We have decided to enroll the boys in the preschool program that is offered free of charge for children who qualify for early intervention through the state. We recently toured the facility and got to sit in during a class and Kara and I think it will be extremely beneficial for the boys. And it comes at no cost to us. This will be for 3 days a week and it will begin in Fall 2014.
We think both boys are continuing to make improvements with their speech development. Jakob is progressing at a faster speed but this doesn't surprise us. Jakob does A LOT of repeating these days and he started just this week with full on "jargon" conversations. It is hilarious. And Alex is also progressing too. Alex has started to repeat more vowel sounds and even has a handful of words he speaks on a regular basis. Alex has also recently started to pay very close attention to our lips. This is a huge step in the right direction as we know it means he now understands that he us to change the shape of his lips in order to change the sounds that come out. It's hard to quantify the number of words each boy speaks at the moment. They are sporadic for the most part but both boys do say some words with regularity that include OH-NO, mine, no, mom, moo, hop-hop, bye-bye, ooo (for open), hi. I know there are a lot I am forgetting at the moment.
The speech therapist that visits the boys mentioned to us a few weeks ago that she was starting to think that Alex might be experiencing some sensory issues that could be a reason that he has experienced a delay in his speech development. I will be honest. My first reaction was, "Huh?" but then Kara and I started to do some reading and this light bulb just went off in both of our heads. You should have seen the text message conversations between us on this day. We always felt that there were significant differences between the boys but having never really been around toddlers prior to Jakob and Alex we have no idea what is "normal" and what is "abnormal". Our Jakob is our Jakob. And our Alex is our Alex. But we suddenly began to realize that perhaps Alex was struggling with some "bigger" issues. And so today we had an evaluation done with an occupational therapist. And while Kara and I knew the end result would be that Alex was experiencing some sensory issues we had no idea to the extent. And so today Alex was labeled as having a "severe" sensory issue. Okay. So what did we get out of today? That our Alex is still our Alex. His brain is just developing in a way that is going to require us to change how we are teaching him things in order to ascertain he learns at an appropriate rate. Basically Alex under-responds to sensory stimuli and needs to seek out additional sensory stimuli to feel content in the world. All children have some degree of sensory issues because their brains are developing at a super fast rate. It's just that Alex appears to be on one extreme. So what were some of the signs for us. Many "typical" toddler things and some not so "typical" toddler things.
* Alex is in constant movement. And this often involves doing a task over and over and over again. And if it is not a repetitive task then Alex will usually only focus on a task for about a minute.
* Alex is a dare devil. He is now known to jump off high places and run into things just for the "fun" of it.
* Alex has a pain threshold like no other. The little man doesn't even move a muscle when getting blood drawn.
* Alex was a super easy baby. He rarely cried.
* Alex is a screamer. And he gets impatient very fast.
* He has a significant speech delay. And he did not babble much as a baby.
* Alex is obsessed with spinning around in circles or being thrown-up in the air.
* Alex rarely smiled as a toddler. And it's still hard to get a smile.
* Alex moved very little in my belly.
* Alex flips though books at record speed.
It all came down to quantifying these (and other) behaviors to identify whether they were simply typical toddler behaviors or if perhaps a sensory issue was at hand. And we determined that Alex was indeed facing a sensory issue.
So the occupational therapist put Alex on a sensory diet today (seriously that's how it is referenced) and basically at an elementary level the more physical activity we can get Alex to participate in the better it's going to be for his brain development. We need to encourage Alex to be a mover and a shaker! We've had already noticed that Alex "talks" much more when he is being active. So I guess the occupational therapist might be on to something. The occupational therapist will continue to visit with us while Alex is enrolled in the services offered through the state and of course this will be a focus item when the boys go to preschool in the fall.
I'm grateful to the resources that have been given to us since the boys were born. I believe in my heart that Alex is a very intelligent little boy. And I believe that once we are able to identify the ways in which Alex can learn he is only going to go big places in this world. It is my hope that both boys are on target with their peers by the time we reach kindergarten. And I really do think that is going to happen for us.
Mary
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