In January of this year, after much denial, I took L to something in our community called Pepstart. Pepstart is a once a month assessment clinic that you can attend for free with your child if you are having concerns about their development in any way. While there you are able to have short 10-15 minute assessments with a variety of professionals, from nutritionists to speech language pathologists. My concerns with L included his lack of language skills, his repetitive play, and our struggle with introducing any new kind of food to his meals. While there we saw consultants from two different agencies and after watching L play, and asking me questions, both of them recommended that L be put on their waiting lists for speech language therapy and for a developmental assessment. One of the agencies I had heard of before and one was new to me, but I agreed to put L on both waiting lists.
It didn’t take long to hear back from either of them and soon he had been assessed by both of them and his therapies began. At the one agency we have been attending both speech and language, and behavioural therapy for the past 3 months every two weeks. The other agency does home visits and we have been visiting with one of their infant and child development consultants once every two weeks for a few months. It is this consultant who has sped up the diagnosis process for us by referring us to a psychologist at our local hospital, and who has also got L started on occupational therapy as well as meeting with a nutritionist. They also both recommended that I start L at a preschool and so I have enrolled him for two days a week.
All in all it amounts to one therapy appointment a week, which can leave me a bit frazzled, but which has already helped L tremendously. His language has exploded in the last month and we are even starting to hear two word sentences which is very exciting! He has also begun to play less repetitively and more functionally! All of this has justified to me that it was time for some extra help. Now we are just waiting for the big appointment…
Keep up with Therapy! Do you do any play therapy? I’m wondering if we should start that, or just stick with speech.
Hi! Yes the behavioural therapy I was talking about is play-based…really his speech and language therapy is mostly play based as well. It has really helped his play to become less repetitive and more functional though so I recommend it!