Worries about Laila
2023-Jul-24, Monday 13:16![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Laila had an assessment today by the Early Intervention specialists, who we were recommended to by the hospital because of her history of infantile spasms. The long story short is that she has speech delays--not in terms of her vocabulary, which is average or above-average for her age, but in her usage of words. When talking to us, she sometimes won't use words to indicate her wants at all, just whining and hoping that we'll understand her. The specialist talking to ![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
sashagee (I was out of the room) said that Laila should not just be trying to communicating her wants, she should be eager to do so because she can finally talk in a way that other people understand. But she often doesn't.
The grandparents tell us that Laila is more talkative whensashagee is not there, so I do wonder how much if it is lack of necessity--Laila knows that she doesn't need to ask us "Up please?" when she wants to be picked up, and she doesn't need to ask for food specifically by name. At lunch today, after the meeting, I stopped counting "Please?" from Laila as good enough for a food request and made her ask for exactly what kind of food she wanted, and she did eventually say "Bread. Please?"...though not until after sashagee said "She saw the bread," which gets back to the concern. Laila understands the meaning of words, and will imitate our usage of them, but she's not synthesizing her own requests as often as they like.
The good news is that everything else is basically on track--her motor skills, her ability to focus on play that interests her (she spent a while drawing circles), her movement up and down obstacles, her ability to feed herself, her response to requests we make of her are all good. They're going to put her in weekly therapy to improve her language skills and recommended that we get her a play group--sashagee want to put her in gymnastics.
My parents are a little dismissive of the idea that Laila is so far behind (the evaluator said she had the asking skills of a fourteen-month-old). I do think that part of the problem is that we've been too indulgent with her, though. We were so happy that she got through her infantile spasms without suffering severe brain damage, andsashagee has been sick basically from eight months before Laila was born until this past May. She's worried that her being sick has sabotaged Laila and it's all her fault, but getting Laila more help this early is good, as is that this is really the only thing the specialist was concerned with. Laila knows the words, and she can use them abstractly. We just need to teach her that she needs to use them.
sashagee (I was out of the room) said that Laila should not just be trying to communicating her wants, she should be eager to do so because she can finally talk in a way that other people understand. But she often doesn't. The grandparents tell us that Laila is more talkative when
sashagee is not there, so I do wonder how much if it is lack of necessity--Laila knows that she doesn't need to ask us "Up please?" when she wants to be picked up, and she doesn't need to ask for food specifically by name. At lunch today, after the meeting, I stopped counting "Please?" from Laila as good enough for a food request and made her ask for exactly what kind of food she wanted, and she did eventually say "Bread. Please?"...though not until after sashagee said "She saw the bread," which gets back to the concern. Laila understands the meaning of words, and will imitate our usage of them, but she's not synthesizing her own requests as often as they like. The good news is that everything else is basically on track--her motor skills, her ability to focus on play that interests her (she spent a while drawing circles), her movement up and down obstacles, her ability to feed herself, her response to requests we make of her are all good. They're going to put her in weekly therapy to improve her language skills and recommended that we get her a play group--
sashagee want to put her in gymnastics.My parents are a little dismissive of the idea that Laila is so far behind (the evaluator said she had the asking skills of a fourteen-month-old). I do think that part of the problem is that we've been too indulgent with her, though. We were so happy that she got through her infantile spasms without suffering severe brain damage, and
sashagee has been sick basically from eight months before Laila was born until this past May. She's worried that her being sick has sabotaged Laila and it's all her fault, but getting Laila more help this early is good, as is that this is really the only thing the specialist was concerned with. Laila knows the words, and she can use them abstractly. We just need to teach her that she needs to use them.
