Wednesday: Significant Communication Delays. 10:30 am - 4:30 pm

Janine picked me up at 10:30 today and we drove to her office. I started working on my profiles and finishing up my project there while she had a meeting at a daycare for a certain child. After that, she picked me up and we visited a 2 ½ year old girl, who has significant delays in all development areas. She looks age appropriate but does not behave that way at all. One example of how much behind she is, is that she started walking about 3 months ago. The first year of her life, she had very bad reflux problems and was very irritable, so that the focus in that year really only was on those problems trying to make it better and to make her more comfortable. Because she has gotten very used to being on her belly, she has a muscle imbalance and is stronger with her left side. Even though she is already that old, she barely has any words at all. It took Janine a long time to get through to her and the little girl has just recently started to finally make process. Walking was a major milestone as well as she finally has learned how to direct people to help her even though she does not ask for it yet. Currently, Janine tries to get her to establish communicative eye contact and to help her getting rid of her imbalance.

            Our second visit today was a very important one to me, as we visited one of our autism children. The boy is just about 2 and shows significant signs of autism. Last week when I saw him, his brother who is diagnosed with a form of autism as well was around. With him around, the little boy was very unfocused and easily distracted running of with his brother and following his bad behavior. Compared to that, when I saw him without his brother today, it was a very good session. He was very focused and Janine was able to start getting him used to sit on a table when playing with a toy. This is very important, as it will give him a little structure and routine and will keep him more focused on the toy. Another reason behind it was that Janine wants to start a certain practicing of matching objects in boxes that will later enhance and facilitate communication for him. It was very exciting for me to see him again today and to see Janine succeed in catching his attention and interest, which was very hard last week.