Evaluation and Therapy for Maddie

Maddie is taking an early nap today which is unusual for her but she has had a busy morning. We woke up early to go to her evaluation appointment to see if she qualifies for physical therapy. The evaluation was set up before she started walking but I figured it couldn't hurt to go anyways even though she is walking now. Well, she does need therapy, but not physical therapy. She apparently needs speech therapy. At the evaluation there was my case worker, an occupational therapist and a speech therapist. It lasted a little over an hour and they had certain toys for Maddie to play with and they asked me a bunch of questions. She did the right things with the toys, she put the shapes in the right places, took toys in and out of the cups and but small objects inside a small hole. At the end they added up her scores and she was in the "average" range for everything but in the "low average" range for a lot of things. But from what I understand they were saying that that could all be tied into her late physical development. Her adaptive/self help skills were pretty low. Things like feeding herself with a spoon she tries to do it but she hasn't really gotten the hang of that yet. Her communication score was an 87 and the average range for her age is 85-115. The speech therapist was explaining to me how there are two parts to communcation that they look at, spoken communication and understanding. She said her vocabulary is mostly social words like bye-bye and uh-oh, not really words that relate to objects like cup and ball that she should be saying. And that she should know at least 5 body parts, she only knows nose and mouth. She said she seems to understand cues more than relating to objects. She should be verbalizing that she is hungry and thirsty in some way but she doesn't. The things she does do though are when someone tells her to get her baby doll she will go get it and she does the same for her pacifier. I wasn't expecting them to tell me she was behind in speech. I thought she was fine. I still think she is okay but I guess she just needs a little bit of help. It's kind of strange hearing from therapists that your kid is developing at a little slower pace than the average. They were like she seems like a very happy, social little girl. And she is a happy, smart little girl!! Yesterday I took her to the pediatrician and after everything they did to her like measure her and looking into her ears she would look up and say "all done". It was so funny. Now if that isn't a sign of a smart 1 1/2 year old I don't know what is!
Well no pictures for this post. And I have more to write about. Quite a few things have happened this week but I don't really have time. I have a lot of schoolwork I have to do.