Doctors, Therapists, IFSPs oh my.....

Well little guy has been being seen by early intervention therapists for 6 months as of yesterday and I had an IFSP (individual family service plan) meeting yesterday to decide where we go from here.  He has sensory integration problems as well as a severe expressive speech delay.  He also displays some repetitive behaviors and has had loss of speech skills which are consistent with an autism spectrum disorder.  He is however very social which has the therapists not knowing what to think.  He has been seeing the developmental therapist weekly for six months with a focus on speech.  He has not made much progress as far as speech in the past six months.  He did go from a four month speech level up to a six month speech level and has some communication skills like signing that bump his communication up to a 10 to 12 month level.  He is 18 months old by the way.  His sensory problems have worsened and are causing some serious feeding issues that the therapists are concerned about.  Anyways, they bumped his therapy up and he will now have 7 appointments with various therapists a month.  8 if you count the one where he is seeing two therapists at the same time.  He will be seeing two different developmental therapists, a nutritionist, an occupational therapist, and a speech therapist.  Thankfully half of the therapists will be coming to our home to do the therapy.  Also, they are finally sending us for diagnostic work to check for autism or any genetic conditions that may be the underlying cause of all this.  Sure I have only been wondering and worrying about it for six months but it seems like forever.  Hopefully it all goes through quickly and we get some answers.

This was meant to be an update mostly for family members but reading back over it, I realize it sounds like a rather depressing post.  I will say little guy is such a fun, happy little boy, and I enjoy his little quirks and wouldn't trade any minute of it!  He is constantly finding ways to get around his speech delays and really gets his point across in the most amusing ways.  One day he wanted me to help him put his sunglasses on, so he brought them over.  I knew what he wanted, but I thought I would tease him a bit to see what he would do.  I put them on my own head which he thought was hilarious.  He then grunted and pointed at his own eyes and then at the sunglasses.  He was so happy when I responded and helped him put them on.  He is such a sweetie pie, and I thank God every day for my little boy and all my little kids.  They are perfect just the way they are.