Early Intervention

[888mom]

I wanted to share that early intervention can do amazing things.  Regardless if you have a child who might have autism or just speech delays or motor delays or whatever delays.  I have a friend who was initially turned down to have her son have speech therapy when he turned 2. I am still not sure why he was turned down, and I'm not sure why my friend didn't have him reevaluted months later when he wasn't progressing in his speech.  He didn't have a big vocabularly at age 2, maybe 10 to 15 words, but they said he understood language well enough (his receptive language) and he didn't have any other conditions like  sensory issues or being delayed in motor skills or anything. This was back in the fall of 2007.  She also didn't think it was important that he was behind in what the early intervention calls adapative skills which would include self-feeding and that sort of thing.  My daughter qualified for lots of stuff because she couldn't say a single word and she didn't understand a single word either.  So, that produced 2 kids, about the same age... that were close enough in skill levels... so yeah... I guess I am comparing kids... which moms hate you to do.  Which I usually hate doing.  But what is making me do it, is trying to convey to other people that early intervention speech therapy can do wonderful things because speech therapists are trained and can teach you if you watch them, what to work on with your kids, and figure out how your child learns differently and help them then learn.

Well, my daughter and her son will be turning 3 this fall. He's one week older.  And although he was ahead of her last fall, since she's been goign through early intervention therapy for the last 9 months or so, she is way ahead of him in langauge skills and sign language.  If you ask her if she wants more macaroni and cheese, she'll either sign or say the word more please.  She is really starting to understand questions.  I really give thanks to all the speech and developmental therapy she has had 3 times each week for an hour each session.  She also knows how to share and turn take.  She has problems saying words, and sometimes she has problems recalling a word.  But she knows sign language and can respond with sign language if not verbally.  My friend's son doesn't respond to questions.  Many times not to his own name.  He doesn't feed himself or even try to feed himself.  My daughter is not good at it at all, but at least she'll try.  We live in the U.S., and kids can qualify in our state for developmental preschool or continued therapy through the public school system if you go to the school to be evaluated/assessed.  My friend is not going to do that. She feels that he will talk when he's ready to talk.  I can see his frustration in his face or in hearing him whine.  I think he wants to communicate, he just can't figure out how.  He knows words but uses them to label, not to communicate.  I know this is something we've been working with with my daughter.  He has not had anyone working with him.

In addition to being very thankful my daughter is progressing with her speech and much of it has to be congratulated to the therapists for showing me how to work with her (they give me "homework" assignments to work on certain concepts with her so I can continue what they were doing).... but I'm also concerned for my friend's child.  Will he do as well in school if he doesn't get early intervention therapy?  Would a developmental preschool help him out?  WOuld a regular preschool take him and would he learn as well in a regular preschool if he's farther behind all the other kids?  Would he feel incompetent or unhappy if the other kids ask him lots of questions and start asking him why he can't speak?  The few words he does say now are hard to understand.  Will he learn to pronounce things as well?  

I have a sister (who's now an adult) who went through speech therapy starting at age 3 (there wasn't early intervention before age 3 when we were growing up) who continued to need speech therapy and help with phonix and reading through elementary school.  As an adult she is very thankful she had help and assistance and realizes that she would not have gotten as far as she did in school (graduating high school with mostly all As and then going on to college and graduating with high honors, or whatever the Latin name for it is called which they use).  

Anyways, I just wanted to share that therapy can be wonderful for kids.  And if you can take advantage of free therapy, why would you turn it down?  I'm sure my friend has reasons, but she won't talk to me about them.  And I won't push her on the issue because, regretably, I don't do well confronting people or with debating.  i just have so few friends, and like she's my only friend where I'm currently living.  So, I haven't said much because I don't want to lose my friendship with her.  Not that I see her that often, though.    

[888mom]

Oh, yeah, I know what you mean about taking words from the background and making your own meaning for them.  Our daughter loves Backyardigans, Little Einsteins, and her uncle recently taught her how to play on the Wii (we have the Wii sports and let her play... or attempt to play golf... plus she watches us).

Phrases that she now says and they mean other things:
"Ski patrol to the rescue!" means that it's time to go to the car and go do something fun like go to the park or go shopping.  Taken from a Backyardigans episode.
"good birdie" from the Wii golf game... basically another word of congratulations... which I guess it does mean on the game.
"Stomp stomp stomp... I'm a yeti!"  well, that I think she's just singing the song.  

She also loves other things from the Backyardigans and Little Einsteins.  She used to pat pat on her stomach like  the Little Einsteins do on their TV  show when Rocket takes off..  when we were in the car and then yell "Blast off!" as we back out of our garage with the car.  She has stopped doing that recently though.  I guess she got bored of it.  

There's a lot of other phrases from episodes she likes.  My husband thinks it's like when Batman and Robin used to say "To the Batmobile!"... so he says she's like a superhero having these little catch phrases for things.  :)  

So I'd say she's recently started the substituting words or phrases for things she wants to express.  Isn't TV wonderful?  :)  I love Backyardigans myself.  Whoever came up with that show is an absolute genius... and the Backyardigans songs for several of the episodes are really good.  We have DVDs of them since we don't have cable TV.  One of them they go to Mars, another they go into the deep sea where Uniqua and Tasha are mermaids... and they sing that one in Bollywood style.  That's one of my favorites.  Anyways, I also love the fact that my daughter is learning to sing many of the songs.  She kind of slurs a lot of the words and mispronounces... but she's getting good pitch on her singing.  She loves Little Mermaid singing too.  Okay, so she's learning some interesting vocabulary.  Like Mermaid and Yeti.  And Birdie.  LOL...

[MJIthewriter]

I can't make much sense out of margypops reply here, but I don't believe she is pushing drug therapy here.  I think she is supporting you for the speech therapy. As far as pushing the other stuff, I haven't seen her other posts to know where she stands.

[MJIthewriter]

It took my dad some major a$$ riding to get the state of CO to put me through some of the intervention programs.  I remember at some time I started to take words from the background and make my own meanings for them. (that is connecting the word with whatever I was thinking at the time).  At that time I'm thinking that's probably when the early intervention speech therapy is the most benificial. The problem though, is unless you're the person yourself, it's hard to tell exactly when that is occuring. With me it probably was age 3-4. Some children it may happen earlier and some later.That way if possible help the child to connect the right words to their thoughts, so they can start expressing what they are thinking.

I'm glad to hear the good news.

[888mom]

I am not for drug therapies, though.  Or any of that DAN stuff either.  It's the speech therapy that is wonderful.  And it's not just the therapist doing the stuff with my daughter, it's her showing me how to do stuff with my daughter that's the essential thing.  Okay, so she learns language differently than other kids.  Learning how to teach her is what's important.  So, I guess in a way, parents are getting therapy too... therapy on how to be better teaching parents.  Occupational therapists also work on sensory issues... it's important when they show the parents what activities to do.  Even if you only see them once or twice, getting ideas from them on how to implement a sensory diet if your child has sensory issues is a good thing.  

I guess the other thing that frustrates me is that a friend has been talking with this business associate who has a child going through the same early intervention program, but she works full time.  The daycare provider does not watch the therapies or share any of the therapy session with the parents other than the piece of paper the therapist wrote up.  They've been complaining about how speech therapy is utterly and totally useless.  Well, if the kid is only seen once a week for an hour, and no one is watching and following through on activities to work on, of course therapy would be useless.

So, yup... speech therapy and TLC is a good way to go.

[margypops]

Well at least its positive Therapy as unfortunatly some children without good reason are given powerful drugs and labelled and it follows them all their life, some do need it but a lot of children out there just need more TLC ,speech Therapy seems a better way to go.well done.

[Sally44]

I'm glad you're having such a positive result with your daughter.
Early intervention is recommended by all professionals regarding developmental issues.  That is why I find it so frustrating that some areas just don't have it.  Or the 'graduated' approach to providing therapies and supports means that by the time the child gets the level of support they actually need, they are usually around 7/8 years old.
It would be so much better to go in early with as much as possible, and then start to decrease that support as the child was coping, learning and developing.
Unfortunately, it is more likely that your daughter will have a more positive outcome than your friends child.  But many people do choose not to get the support/therapies/diagnosis because of the stigma they think it will give the child.  But the truth is that no authority is going to provide support/therapies etc to a child that does not need it.  Therefore if they are assessed as 'not needing intervention' then everything is great.  To deny the assessments because they may need the intervention and therefore be stigmatised seems crazy to me.  So their preferred option is to let their child struggle and fail in certain areas and are happy to deal with all the self esteem, behavioural etc issues this will cause as well as the detrimental effect it will have on their future prospects.