Today we took Aiden back to the private speech therapist to try again for that initial assessment. Aiden was definitely more willing to work today, thank goodness. The first 10 minutes he sat pretty quiet and shy.. then he started to open up and answer questions, or at least point to the pictures, etc. There was a period of about 15 minutes where Aiden was doing great. He even spoke in 4 and 5 word sentences to the therapist. We were really happy about that because she could really hear his speech. She also just observed him in general and noted that he makes great eye contact, smiles and interacts, follows directions for a period of time, and scans the pages well to find the correct answers. He did not tick AT ALL, and hasn't been for a bunch of days now.
At the end... she talked to us, and we realized we have THREE different things we are looking at:
1) She concurs that whatever happened to Aiden a month ago is medical. She feels this is pretty obvious, which is the same thing the other therapists said at our other assessment. So, we must push forth with trying to get some answers that way. The 24 hour EEG is in our future, more bloodwork, and a possible spinal tap.
2) Regardless of what is going on medically with Aiden, she feels he should be assessed by a behavioralist. Why? She thinks Aiden is possibly CHOOSING to not answer questions at times and choosing when to comply and not to comply. She said Aiden displayed today that he knows the answers in his head. What does this mean? Well, that Aiden is strong willed, and if something seems "hard", he just says "forget it" and would rather not try, and gives up. She thinks a behavioralist could really help us with this area.
3) Today the therapist let us know that Aiden's speech is FINE. She said his speech is completely clear and intelligable, and the few letters that he struggles with are completely age appropriate. Yey, great news! BUT.. she said his area of struggle and delay is in the language/communication area. So this still falls in the realm of needed Speech Therapy - just not specifically to work on his speech, but more so how he processes his thoughts into forming his language. (hope this makes sense). Again, this goes back to helping his behavior from his frustration.. so we can get somewhere on this end.
So... we are going to set up a HOME assessment with a behavioralist. Apparantly this team also has a psychologist on the team as well, so if we need that it's there for us. Unfortunately, this is the first "service" that is NOT at all covered by insurance. Scary.. but we will figure something out.
As I have said before, right now we are watching Aiden in developmental fast forward. This kid is catching up on what he lost each and every day. He is "recovering" from whatever it was that happened to him. We feel SOOOO blessed by this. The question is WHAT HAPPENED?? This is truly the scariest part of this whole thing.
Okay, so Aiden's birthday party. A few weeks ago, Aiden wouldn't have handled it very well. But WOW did he have a good time. He got right into the spirit. He greeted some of his guests by name (his greetings and salutations are coming back, yey!). He sang along with every song I did. He danced, played with his friends, sang along to Happy Birthday, blew out his candles, ate his cake and was the happiest birthday boy on earth that day! Our friend Paul made the cake as you will see below. Aiden LOVES any transportation.. so his cake was a racecar. So cool!!!!! So.. here are some pictures below to enjoy. I'll be back with another update soon!
Love, Holly
