Early Intervention Part 1

Lottie's Early Intervention (EDIS) appointment was this morning. There are problems but we don't know how these problems are going to affect her yet.

Issues:

1. She has low muscle tone in her stomach/back. This results in her having a hard time sitting cross legged or pushing herself up from a sitting position without 'bear crawling' her way up.

2. She has already created a preference for her right hand. While this isn't a huge deal, this does mean her left hand isn't gaining as much strength and she may have issues with coordination when she gets older. The lady seemed to think this could be a result of low muscle tone in her left arm or hand that caused the preference.

3. She has a lack of muscle tone in her mouth. She exhibits this by chewing weird. She also tends to shove her food to the side of her mouth rather than using her tongue to move it around. This results in frequent choking on her food. The lady observing said this could also be because of:

4. She has as texture aversion. Ever since she was little she didn't like putting things in her mouth and would choke easily on food. Not 'mouthing' toys or food well means that she didn't gain the proper muscles strength in her mouth to actually form words.

As we were pulling out all the toys for Lottie to show off her skills, the lady said that Lottie is very smart. She's doing activities that are beyond most 18 month old babies she sees. She seems to think that things could go either direction- Lottie could figure out how to talk and have a verbal explosion or, because sign language is working so well for her, she could decide learning to talk is just too hard.

What I'm supposed to do:

1. Get a vibrating tooth brush for Lottie to play with. This will help desensitize her mouth, if she's willing to put it in!

2. Let Lottie play on playgrounds/jungle gyms even more often. She needs a chance to strengthen her core muscles. Playing is good but she needs to play even more than the normal 18 month old would.

3. Stick our tongue out at Lottie and get her mimicking us as often as we can. This is important for her eventually copying the words we teach her.

4. Stop responding to Lottie when she says "uh". Lottie uses one sound to get attention, express needs, or generally say anything. We need to stop responding when she says 'uh' and only respond when she uses a different sound, regardless of what that sound is. This will encourage her to explore other sounds to get what she wants.

Lottie is a very smart child, I know this. But once she figures something out, she doesn't like to change nor have other people help her. This does not bode well for teaching her how to talk! Ignoring her oft-used 'uh' will mean more temper tantrums. Yay.

At this point, the lady from EDIS will give her report to her boss. She said that Lottie would not fail any of the tests they would give, because sign language is considered communication just as speaking is and since she has a rather large sign vocabulary, she wouldn't qualify for services based on the tests this lady knows about. She is hoping that her boss knows a test for verbal only that will allow them to get her help that she does need. If she doesn't qualify for services now, they'll put her on a monitoring situation where they'll meet with us once a month and she can give us as many tips and tricks as she can until either Lottie starts talking or she hits the 2 year mark where she is supposed to have 30-50 words and she would definately qualify if she hasn't started talking yet.

Audiology appointment next week. Again, hopfully nothing comes up.