Major Progress!

I met with the school district a few weeks ago for a follow up meeting to the testing they did with McKenna. I was right-- she tested out of help from the school district. They said her scores were awesome, exactly what every parent would want to see of their 2 1/2 year old. They continued to be incredibly encouraging and complimentary of everything we've done with McKenna. Ms. M said if I start having any concerns or feel McKenna's development is dropping off again that I can call her and they can always bring her back in for another eval.

I teared up in the meeting as I tried to voice my concerns. They really listened to everything I had to say and really considered it. Ms. M. said she would over rule her scores and have her accepted to the pre-school as an "at risk" child. But that would not qualify her for the "disabilities program" which means no "one on one" help, no speech therapy- basically just pre-school. I found out last year they have something called "Friday School" so I asked about that and they said that would be fine as well. Everyone that works there is especially trained and qualified to work with kids who are having problems so I guess that would be the reason to do either the 4 day a week pre-school or "Friday School". I will for sure have her tested again next year to make sure she is continuing to progress.

We are considering "Friday School", but we may be able to get another 6 month session of speech therapy from Childrens. McKenna's therapist at Children's has said she would recommend her- based on our attendance, our work ethic and the fact that McKenna would not be receiving speech therapy anywhere else. Right now Friday is the only day that has a time that works for us at Children's so if I had to choose I'd obviously fore go "Friday School" for Speech Therapy at Childrens... Maybe we can work it out to do both. We'll see.

We have already decided not to do the 4 days pre-school. I'm home schooling Cole this year for kindergarten and it makes no sense to me to keep him home and send McKenna to school.

Ms. T. (McKenna's First Steps therapist) gave her the Goldman-Fristoe last week to make sure that she scored ok on articulation. Her thinking was that the PLS-4 played into McKenna's strengths. However she scored the low end of average on the Goldman-Fristoe! That score would not qualify her for any help with the district either. So basically McKenna is doing AWESOME and has come SO FAR!! I have worked through my feelings about everything and have come to a place of peace and excitement about how she's progressing and her future.

Dave and I feel that she needs to continue therapy to maintain this pace of improvement. She still does not speak fluently like a normal (almost) 3 year old, but she is so improved it's AMAZING.

Here she is singing "It's raining it's pouring..." after her shower this morning.



A few things she still struggles with:

She often takes long pauses in therapy to answer questions. We are not sure if it's a delay while she figures out the question or a delay as she tries to get the words out- or a little of both. We suspect either a little of both or just getting the words out. She is very good in her answers so we know she is understanding questions very well.

She is very confused about "he" and "she". She knows the difference between girl and boy, but the pronouns seem to confuse her to the point of frustration.

Saying the "s" sound at the beginning of a word is very hard for her. She needs a lot of prompting/help to achieve an "s" at the beginning of a word. Spontaneously she says, "piher" for "spider" , "fiffers" for "scissors" etc... "L" is hard at beginning of a word as well. I think that's normal for her age though.

Her speech is fairly broken, she marks articles and prepositions with the sound "na" a lot of the time. So for instance, "The dress is cute" might be, "na dwess na coot." But I can understand her and so can others. That is exciting!

She is communicating her personality now by expressing her feelings about things. She told me the other day, "ooo hut na fweewings mom.." "You hurt my feelings mom." and she'll say, ah weowee maad!" and we hear, "Cole not sharewing.." all day long. (-: Her flow and intonation is not perfect, but it could be much worse. Her therapists expected her to be a bit more stilted and monotone when she started speaking in sentences so they are pleasantly surprised.

I had an interesting conversation with Ms. A. her Children's therapist last week. She was talking about how far McKenna had come. I asked if her amazing progress meant that she does not have Apraxia..?? She answered, No- McKenna definitely has Apraxia, but that McKenna is the poster child for early intervention. Meaning McKenna is exactly the kind of child with exactly the kind of diagnosis that can be helped in a huge way if you catch it early and work hard. She also said that she did not think McKenna would have been speaking right now maybe even at ALL without the work we've done.

I'm so thankful for how well she is doing and for all of the wonderful therapists that have worked with her this past year!

Love,
Amber