Developmental Pedi Appt #1

Well….today was loooonnnnngggggg and didn’t seem to end. We didn’t leave Dornbechers until after 1pm.

I wanted to give an update earlier but the one moment of downtime I had…I chose to take a nap instead. But thank you everyone for your kind words and support. We truly appreciate it. It definitely takes a village…not just for the kids, but for the parents as well.

We did leave with some diagnoses, most we knew about. Some questions were answered, and new questions in their place.

We got a verbal summary. We wil receive a full summary in the mail in a couple weeks.

Here it is in a nutshell: he has sensory processing disorder (which we already knew about but now have an official diagmosis).

He has indicators of autism but not enough to be considered autistic. They said he is too social and communicative to be considered autistic. But she said that if teachers and his support team at school question it, they will do a autism specific test. It is possible that he is just on the very mild side, which can be hard to tease out.

He does have receptive and expressive communication delay, and is at a 3/4 yr old level. She told us we needed to let his teachers and support staff know about this bc he is most definitely a visual and hands on learner. When he is in class, he is going to have a harder time when teachers “teach at him” and just talk at him. We may have to look into private speech therapy as well. But she thinks once his language and communication skills get up to where they should be, a lot of his other issues will decrease in intensity.

His gross motor skills are perfect, but he does have issues with fine motor skills and is delayed, like coloring, cutting, buttoning, etc. She recommended to have a school occupational therapist go into the classroom and make sure it is set up for him and the way he needs it to be. But to also continue with his private OT.

So the next steps: we are waiting to get an appointment with the psychologist in order to see where his cognitive skills are. She also referred us to a sleep clinic and directed us to his main pedi to discuss sleep meds in the meantime. I am sure we will have tons of questions as we process today, and once we get the written report.

But, the big takeaway, is that he is so smart, and amazing. While he was in shutdown mode for most of the morning, he wowed all the doctors and gave them an idea of the amazing potential he has.

He is our #SuperQuirkyLolo. And while he throws every single curveball at us and we have had to throw out the parenting handbook so many times….life would not be worth living without him.