Developmental Delays

So today was my meeting with the specialists who assessed my son for a developmental delay. A month ago he went and was tested you can read all about it here.

When I told people what I was doing it seemed most people fell into two categories.

The first were the people who fed my fears. They pointed out all the little things about my son and attributed them to every disorder known to man. I heard everythng from a physical speech impediment to mild autism. Eventually I stopped talking to these people because I was already freaking out and didn't need anymore worked up.

The second group of people fell into the "he'll grow out of it" category. They would say things like "he's only three" or "your over reacting" or "its nothing" or "some people are just late bloomers" I almost listened to them. I almost didn't take him in. But i'm glad I did becuase other wise I would have obsessed that I never got him checked out.

I didn't have to brng him to the apointment so I took him to daycare. I also had a million things to today so it was easier to take him to daycare. They ushered me back to the room of paperwork. I sat down and every specialist in the building came in and sat down. Each of them took turns and explained their portion of the the evaluation to me. I knew within the first five minutes what was going on.

DJ has a developmental delay. The way they explained it is this: he is an "at risk" kid, rather than a "special needs" kid. His delay is mild but worrisome enough that they want to nip it in the bud. If left unchecked it could lead to problems in his learning skills later.

He as a delay in his speech pattern that does not allow him to vocalize double consanant sounds like "st" as in "stop" or "th" or even "pl" as in "play". his brain drops one of the sounds. so instead he'll say "sop" or "pay" and sometimes his brain replaces some sounds with other sounds like "spoon" comes out as "foon". Also his cognitive sklls are behind where they should be, even if he was a slow starter, by this point he should be able to recognize and identify simple shapes. But he can't seem to be able to. And his fine motor skills are a little behind. They are not as worried about the cognitive and fine motor skills as they are about his speech.

So as soon as I have an epi-pen for him to take to school (he has a severe allergy to peanuts) he will be in a special pre-k program specifically designed for kids like him.

So its not as bad as it could be. And I'm not as freaked out as I thought I would be. I'm actually relieved.

He should be in his classes by sometime next week. I'm picking up his epi-pen either tomorrow or thursday.