Getting Speech and Occupational Therapies After Age 3

M2 aged out of early intervention therapy a few months ago. The early intervention provided her with in-home speech and occupational therapy once a week, alternating. Once you hit age 3 though, that all goes away. Boom. Diagnosis or not, needing help or not -- Third birthday? GONE. Then what happens? The child still needs therapy, that need doesn't magically go away. What is next? Where do you turn?

At that point, the therapy goes through the school district. I never even knew that until M2 was going to need the help. The catch is: Getting the therapies isn't automatic. The child has to qualify based on the district's specifications (each does things differently) and it's a long process. It all starts with a call to the school district to tell them your child is aging out of early intervention services. Just because your child may be diagnosed  by a doctor with ASD or he/she has been getting therapy, it doesn't mean the school district will automatically agree that it's needed. They look at things from more of a school functionality aspect. If the issues won't later interfere with schooling, the child won't qualify.

Since August, I've been taking M2 for all kinds of testing to see if she'd qualify to get into the therapy provided by the school district. There were all kinds of hoops to jump through. Speech, cognitive, psychology, behavior, on and on the testing went. Once all the evaluations were finally complete, I met with the team to discuss what they'd determined. Then, we met to discuss what the best next step for her. I spent months worrying about what would happen if the team didn't say she qualified. A and I, along with her early intervention team, knew without a doubt that in order for her to progress she needed to get into the school district's program.

Without it, we didn't now what we would do or what would happen with M2. A private speech therapist and OT alone wouldn't cut it for what her needs are. Plus, those therapies run $150 plus a session and often (like in our case) are not covered by insurance to the extent needed, if at all. Her early intervention team said we had one big thing in our favor: Our school district has the absolute best programs for special needs kids around. It is the most understanding, willing to work with parents and eager to actually help the kids. That didn't stop me from worrying. Every meeting, evaluation, phone call -- anything -- I pleaded M2's case, advocated for her and fought to ensure she'd get the services she needs.

I was lucky that the team working with her saw everything I do and agreed wholeheartedly with everything I said and suggested. In the end, the school district agreed with her autism diagnosis, gave her that diagnosis for school purposes, and agreed that she has a severe speech delay that must be addressed. Her vocabulary, motor planning and clarity simply aren't there. All agreed that she'd need to extra help through the programs the district offers to get her ready for kindergarten. It was all enough to get her into special needs "preschool."

It's called preschool because it goes through the school district, but really, it's speech and occupational therapy twice a week for an hour in a group setting along with one-on-one speech therapy six times a month. The idea is to address the issues she has, expose her to more kids and get her ready to enter kindergarten in a few years.

Her "class" is made up of four or five other special-needs kids. With three teachers and a speech pathologist on hand at all times, it's as close to one-on-one as you can get! During the hour, the teachers work with the kids on things like sitting down to eat, interacting appropriately with peers and adults, sitting in a circle, following directions, playing appropriately -- I honestly don't even know what all she'll be doing yet! With all the time it took to set everything up, M2 has only had two sessions before the holidays started.

Eventually, she'll move up into a larger group then into a group that is a mix of special-needs and typical children. It's a ladder process to slowly get her to where she needs to be, based on her own needs and timeline. As she progresses, more learning and and preschool-type activities are added in addition to the therapies.

We wrapped up her early intervention therapies a day before her birthday and started the preschool therapy two days after. Depending on how she does, I'll most likely be finding a private speech therapist to work with her a few times a month as well. Her previous speech therapist (whom we loved) said she sees the most improvement with kids who have the school district provided therapy and private as well. Setting that up is going to be our next adventure.

Please vote for me by clicking the pink banner below, then clicking the GREEN or ORANGE button on the next page to confirm the vote! Thank you!!

Getting Speech and Occupational Therapies After Age 3

M2 aged out of early intervention therapy a few months ago. The early intervention provided her with in-home speech and occupational therapy once a week, alternating. Once you hit age 3 though, that all goes away. Boom. Diagnosis or not, needing help or not -- Third birthday? GONE. Then what happens? The child still needs therapy, that need doesn't magically go away. What is next? Where do you turn?

At that point, the therapy goes through the school district. I never even knew that until M2 was going to need the help. The catch is: Getting the therapies isn't automatic. The child has to qualify based on the district's specifications (each does things differently) and it's a long process. It all starts with a call to the school district to tell them your child is aging out of early intervention services. Just because your child may be diagnosed  by a doctor with ASD or he/she has been getting therapy, it doesn't mean the school district will automatically agree that it's needed. They look at things from more of a school functionality aspect. If the issues won't later interfere with schooling, the child won't qualify.

Since August, I've been taking M2 for all kinds of testing to see if she'd qualify to get into the therapy provided by the school district. There were all kinds of hoops to jump through. Speech, cognitive, psychology, behavior, on and on the testing went. Once all the evaluations were finally complete, I met with the team to discuss what they'd determined. Then, we met to discuss what the best next step for her. I spent months worrying about what would happen if the team didn't say she qualified. A and I, along with her early intervention team, knew without a doubt that in order for her to progress she needed to get into the school district's program.

Without it, we didn't now what we would do or what would happen with M2. A private speech therapist and OT alone wouldn't cut it for what her needs are. Plus, those therapies run $150 plus a session and often (like in our case) are not covered by insurance to the extent needed, if at all. Her early intervention team said we had one big thing in our favor: Our school district has the absolute best programs for special needs kids around. It is the most understanding, willing to work with parents and eager to actually help the kids. That didn't stop me from worrying. Every meeting, evaluation, phone call -- anything -- I pleaded M2's case, advocated for her and fought to ensure she'd get the services she needs.

I was lucky that the team working with her saw everything I do and agreed wholeheartedly with everything I said and suggested. In the end, the school district agreed with her autism diagnosis, gave her that diagnosis for school purposes, and agreed that she has a severe speech delay that must be addressed. Her vocabulary, motor planning and clarity simply aren't there. All agreed that she'd need to extra help through the programs the district offers to get her ready for kindergarten. It was all enough to get her into special needs "preschool."

It's called preschool because it goes through the school district, but really, it's speech and occupational therapy twice a week for an hour in a group setting along with one-on-one speech therapy six times a month. The idea is to address the issues she has, expose her to more kids and get her ready to enter kindergarten in a few years.

Her "class" is made up of four or five other special-needs kids. With three teachers and a speech pathologist on hand at all times, it's as close to one-on-one as you can get! During the hour, the teachers work with the kids on things like sitting down to eat, interacting appropriately with peers and adults, sitting in a circle, following directions, playing appropriately -- I honestly don't even know what all she'll be doing yet! With all the time it took to set everything up, M2 has only had two sessions before the holidays started.

Eventually, she'll move up into a larger group then into a group that is a mix of special-needs and typical children. It's a ladder process to slowly get her to where she needs to be, based on her own needs and timeline. As she progresses, more learning and and preschool-type activities are added in addition to the therapies.

We wrapped up her early intervention therapies a day before her birthday and started the preschool therapy two days after. Depending on how she does, I'll most likely be finding a private speech therapist to work with her a few times a month as well. Her previous speech therapist (whom we loved) said she sees the most improvement with kids who have the school district provided therapy and private as well. Setting that up is going to be our next adventure.

Please remember to vote for me by clicking the pink banner below!

Wherein I Face the Reality of a Special Needs Child

I've been struggling with this post for a few weeks. I think I'm finally ready to finish and publish it. It's only the first article of many as my family starts this journey.

For awhile now, I've avoided saying it. If you don't say it, it's not true, right? The chance that everything will turn around and change still hangs in the ether. As soon as the words are out, it's like a big boulder comes crashing down in the doorway, making it final. Blocking the escape from the truth. At this point, I can't hide from the truth any more. I need to face the reality.

M2 is a special needs child.

It's nothing to be ashamed of at all, yet it is still difficult to admit. As her mom, I don't want her to have to go through this struggle. I've had to fight through so many things in my life (that's a whole other story), I don't want her to have to as well. I also feel guilty saying it, because I know there are so many kids -- and their parents -- who suffer and struggle even more. Even so, it's the truth that she is special needs.

I'm not calling her special needs for her severe speech delay (at 2.5, she's at a 15-month level and hasn't improved at all since starting therapy in Novemeber). Maybe that qualifies, maybe not. I don't know. It's much more than that.

For the past few months, her behavior has gotten out of hand. Really, that's putting it mildly. She's a ticking time bomb. You never know when or if she's going to go off or even WHY she will. Forget trying to put the pieces back together once she does. You're on damage control at that point. When she's good, she's really good, more well-behaved than a toddler usually is. But when she's having trouble, she's like a mini screaming, destroying, tornado taking all out in her wake. There are also some behaviors that are downright dangerous. I'll go into more details in another post, this one is just meant to be an intro.

At first, we thought it was because of the new baby that M2 had gone from a sweet, normal, pretty well behaved kid to being very difficult. Everything spiralled out of control quickly, with no warning.Getting used to B would make it all go away, right? Wrong. She loves B. Absolutely ADORES him. She's not having issues with having a new baby in the house.

Her speech therapist started noticing the behavior and seemed relieved when I brought it up myself about two months ago. We got her evaluated with an early intervention team who determined that she has sensory processing disorder, known as SPD. There may be more, but we need to see more specialists to determine that.

M2 now gets occupational therapy, but so far nothing is working. It tends to be that things don't work at all, or work once and not again. She has a mix of hypo- and hyper-sensitivity, both seeking and avoiding stimulation depending on many factors. There are no patterns or triggers that we've figured out so far. One time, she may try to avoid something -- like loud noises -- another she may run toward it. The fact that she is SO smart makes things more difficult as well.

One of the reasons (beyond hoping it'd go away) I haven't talked about M2's issues and being special needs, other than speech, is because there is so much stigma and misunderstanding around special needs still. Many barriers and walls need to be broken down still in our society. People need to be educated and need to learn to be more accepting of those who go against the grain of what is "normal." I'm hoping sharing our story helps with this.

Another reason for the silence is that most people just don't seem to get it. So many seem to think it's just normal toddler behavior because they aren't around her all the time to see it or don't understand what is or isn't normal. It's not just a two year old being a two year old. Yes, she was fine when you saw her -- that was a good day. What you didn't see was the hell we faced for the two weeks after that.

Others just don't know what to say, or say they went through it with their kids at this age. No, it's not like that. This isn't normal behavior. I would LOVE to just be going through what you did. Some say that maybe I just don't get how a toddler should behave or can't handle it. Um, EXCUSE ME? Obviously, from your statement, YOU don't know how a toddler should behave and trust me, you wouldn't handle it any better than I am.

Even parents of kids who are special needs don't always get it and question me endlessly, challenging me on what we've been told by the pros, seeming to think they know more about the professionals about diagnosis and her issues. Um, no, you don't. Or, they think that people use the label of special needs just to be "cool" or something. You should know, having a special needs kid isn't cool or fun. It's a struggle every day. I've even had some tell me M2 can't possibly have SPD, it has to be something else because her symptoms aren't the same as their kid's. Uh, hello, every kid is different and M2 isn't the norm of being a seeker OR an avoider. She is both.

Don't get me wrong, we've gotten lots of support as well. I have a wonderful group of fellow stay-at-home moms (my mama tribe) who have given me so much advice and support. They are amazing ladies. Some are dealing with similar themselves so know what it's like. Even those that haven't/aren't going through it offer words of comfort and do their best to help how they can. Family members and other friends have reached out as well. Each does what they can to listen and try to make it easier.

Getting M2 the help she needs and getting us the support we need to help her learn to cope is going to be a long, confusing, difficult road. Just in the past month or so since finding out about the SPD, I've been overwhelmed and have learned there's so much more to it, and to getting her help, than I ever thought. It shouldn't be this difficult or take so dang long to get your child help, nor should you go broke to do so. The system needs an overhaul.

I have so much more I could say. Over time, I will. By sharing our journey, I'm hoping that someone else will feel they're not alone in their struggle. If you're a mom of a special needs kid, I would love to hear your story/advice/suggestions. If you're new to this special needs world like I am, maybe we can help each other through it.

Affiliate Links

Wherein I Face the Reality of a Special Needs Child

I've been struggling with this post for a few weeks. I think I'm finally ready to finish and publish it. It's only the first article of many as my family starts this journey.

For awhile now, I've avoided saying it. If you don't say it, it's not true, right? The chance that everything will turn around and change still hangs in the ether. As soon as the words are out, it's like a big boulder comes crashing down in the doorway, making it final. Blocking the escape from the truth. At this point, I can't hide from the truth any more. I need to face the reality.

M2 is a special needs child.

It's nothing to be ashamed of at all, yet it is still difficult to admit. As her mom, I don't want her to have to go through this struggle. I've had to fight through so many things in my life (that's a whole other story), I don't want her to have to as well. I also feel guilty saying it, because I know there are so many kids -- and their parents -- who suffer and struggle even more. Even so, it's the truth that she is special needs.

I'm not calling her special needs for her severe speech delay (at 2.5, she's at a 15-month level and hasn't improved at all since starting therapy in Novemeber). Maybe that qualifies, maybe not. I don't know. It's much more than that.

For the past few months, her behavior has gotten out of hand. Really, that's putting it mildly. She's a ticking time bomb. You never know when or if she's going to go off or even WHY she will. Forget trying to put the pieces back together once she does. You're on damage control at that point. When she's good, she's really good, more well-behaved than a toddler usually is. But when she's having trouble, she's like a mini screaming, destroying, tornado taking all out in her wake. There are also some behaviors that are downright dangerous. I'll go into more details in another post, this one is just meant to be an intro.

At first, we thought it was because of the new baby that M2 had gone from a sweet, normal, pretty well behaved kid to being very difficult. Everything spiralled out of control quickly, with no warning.Getting used to B would make it all go away, right? Wrong. She loves B. Absolutely ADORES him. She's not having issues with having a new baby in the house.

Her speech therapist started noticing the behavior and seemed relieved when I brought it up myself about two months ago. We got her evaluated with an early intervention team who determined that she has sensory processing disorder, known as SPD. There may be more, but we need to see more specialists to determine that.

M2 now gets occupational therapy, but so far nothing is working. It tends to be that things don't work at all, or work once and not again. She has a mix of hypo- and hyper-sensitivity, both seeking and avoiding stimulation depending on many factors. There are no patterns or triggers that we've figured out so far. One time, she may try to avoid something -- like loud noises -- another she may run toward it. The fact that she is SO smart makes things more difficult as well.

One of the reasons (beyond hoping it'd go away) I haven't talked about M2's issues and being special needs, other than speech, is because there is so much stigma and misunderstanding around special needs still. Many barriers and walls need to be broken down still in our society. People need to be educated and need to learn to be more accepting of those who go against the grain of what is "normal." I'm hoping sharing our story helps with this.

Another reason for the silence is that most people just don't seem to get it. So many seem to think it's just normal toddler behavior because they aren't around her all the time to see it or don't understand what is or isn't normal. It's not just a two year old being a two year old. Yes, she was fine when you saw her -- that was a good day. What you didn't see was the hell we faced for the two weeks after that.

Others just don't know what to say, or say they went through it with their kids at this age. No, it's not like that. This isn't normal behavior. I would LOVE to just be going through what you did. Some say that maybe I just don't get how a toddler should behave or can't handle it. Um, EXCUSE ME? Obviously, from your statement, YOU don't know how a toddler should behave and trust me, you wouldn't handle it any better than I am.

Even parents of kids who are special needs don't always get it and question me endlessly, challenging me on what we've been told by the pros, seeming to think they know more about the professionals about diagnosis and her issues. Um, no, you don't. Or, they think that people use the label of special needs just to be "cool" or something. You should know, having a special needs kid isn't cool or fun. It's a struggle every day. I've even had some tell me M2 can't possibly have SPD, it has to be something else because her symptoms aren't the same as their kid's. Uh, hello, every kid is different and M2 isn't the norm of being a seeker OR an avoider. She is both.

Don't get me wrong, we've gotten lots of support as well. I have a wonderful group of fellow stay-at-home moms (my mama tribe) who have given me so much advice and support. They are amazing ladies. Some are dealing with similar themselves so know what it's like. Even those that haven't/aren't going through it offer words of comfort and do their best to help how they can. Family members and other friends have reached out as well. Each does what they can to listen and try to make it easier.

Getting M2 the help she needs and getting us the support we need to help her learn to cope is going to be a long, confusing, difficult road. Just in the past month or so since finding out about the SPD, I've been overwhelmed and have learned there's so much more to it, and to getting her help, than I ever thought. It shouldn't be this difficult or take so dang long to get your child help, nor should you go broke to do so. The system needs an overhaul.

I have so much more I could say. Over time, I will. By sharing our journey, I'm hoping that someone else will feel they're not alone in their struggle. If you're a mom of a special needs kid, I would love to hear your story/advice/suggestions. If you're new to this special needs world like I am, maybe we can help each other through it.

Affiliate Links

Baby2 and M2 Update

Nursery!
Baby2's room completion is near! A and I cleaned out the closet and rearranged ours to fit some of the stuff in there this past weekend. I then got the nursery closest all organized with the swing, hamper, wipes, diapers, humidifier, etc., that we will be needing to have on hand. A put together M2's cubby storage shelving as well. It's still in the nursery until we swap it with the changing table soon. All the fabric cubes are ready to go on the changing table, I got them organized with wipes, diapers, toys, accouterments, blankets and more. Baby2's hospital bag is ready to go as well. Mine is just a list right now as I realized all the stuff I plan to pack I'm actually using. If I pack it, I wouldn't have what I need now! That'd be rather pointless.

All the extra furniture and lamps have been taken out of the nursery. Some books and random things remain but that'll be easy to clean up. I also painted the anchor wall hanging and Baby2's large initial wall hanging so those are ready to go up. The rest of the room decor arrives tomorrow. This weekend, all of that gets put up and I'll put the finishing touches on the room. That leaves yard work, car maintenance, present wrapping, Christmas decorating, house cleaning and some other random things on my to-do list for next week and the week after. There are only three weeks left. Knock on wood, I think everything might actually get done!

Presents!
M2's Christmas and birthday present situation is all sorted. The last of her gifts arrive tomorrow. I've made a list of what she is getting for each. She'll also be getting a small gift from Baby2 when he comes home from the hospital. It's an adorable Melissa and Doug Christmas tree puzzle I found at Kohl's. It's this one. It looks even nicer in person than on the page. M2 saw it when it first arrived. I had to wrestle it away from her as she wanted it right then. She got the Melissa and Doug advent tree decoration/toy, so that distracted her. That is also adorable! It's better than I expected and M2 is loving decorating and taking apart the tree. The ornaments are all so cute with beautiful designs. It's a good size, too. It should last us for years. It's sold out already. Reading the reviews, it's an item that goes fast each year. I can see why! You can still get it on Amazon for a bit more. Check it out here.

Speech!
The therapy for M2's speech delay was finalized last week. Now, we're just waiting to hear from the speech therapist on setting up her first appointment. She'll be doing twice a month to start. Her coordinator thinks she'll pick up on things and progress fast as she's developing fine everywhere else and shows the signs they look for to know the child will pick up the concepts. We're hoping with hard work from her, A and me that she'll be right on track within a year if not less.

Halloween!

She didn't want to wear her hood inside!

Ready to monkey around.

Halloween was lots of fun. We started out visiting my best friend since high school and his wife. M2 loved that we ordered pizza and she got to watch some cartoons Mama wouldn't usually allow. It was then off to see other good friends and celebrate. One went trick-or-treating with us. M2 got the hang of going door-to-door quickly. She loved knocking and waiting for the door to open. Her costume was a monkey and A was a giant banana. I didn't dress up (hardly any of my clothes fit anymore, let alone a costume!) I did manage to walk around to each house. I'd thought after a few I'd be ready to fall over in pain. Stopping at the end of the drives to take a break while M2 went to the door helped. She was so excited and adorable walking along with her glow sticks and kitty cat candy pail. Sadly, our friends are moving cross country next year so this was our last Halloween with them. It's been a tradition the past 6 years or so to spend it with them so it's like the end of an era. We'll have to find trick-or-treating closer to home instead.


Doctors!
Baby2 has had a few doctor appointments (ok, I had the appointments and he got checked out, with no choice but to come along). He's growing fast. I'm measuring about 3.5-4 weeks ahead, which means right now I feel like I'm at 40 weeks. Driving has gotten hard so A has become my driver. My thyroid is acting up so I saw a specialist for that. He doesn't think Baby2 is being affected and I'm handling the symptoms ok, so we're holding off on meds. I'll be doing blood work often and after Baby2 is born we'll be looking into other testing. It's pretty complicated with many ways it could go as my thyroid is all sorts of screwy. There's a small change it'll go back to normal after Baby2 is born. I'm really hoping it does! There are some other worrisome health issues going on. Those I'm not ready to share yet. I've got more testing for that next week, along with the final ultrasound before Baby2's arrival.

Suspense!
Next week, I'll post pictures of the finished nursery. I was tempted to this week then decided we're so close to it being done I'd rather do a big reveal. You'll have to deal with the suspense until then. I'll also show off the easy painted wall hanging I did and explain it--it's sooo easy! The initial one will have to wait until we reveal his name after birth. I will say I am LOVING how the room looks!

A Quick Update: M2's Speech and Baby2

This week has been busy with kid-related appointments and having my parents in town visiting. One of the big appointments was to get M2's speech intervention rolling.

M2's Speech Development
M2 isn't quite where she should be speech-wise. She understands everything, has ways to get her points across, she just won't use words most of the time. Except for a select few, the words she does know she refuses to use often. A and I have been working with her doing everything we can think of to no avail. The pediatrician said we could either start looking into therapy now, or wait until she turns 2. However, when she turns 2 is just after Baby2 is born. Taking that into account, we decided to start intervention now.

When asked what the next step is to get her help, the doctor very helpfully only said to "call the county." The county very helpfully only has info on getting assistance with speech for kids 3 and over. After some research and asking around at library time, I found a place not too far away that specializes in therapy for under age 3 only. The nice lady I spoke too arranged an appointment for initial intake at our house. She came over this week, met M2, asked a bunch of questions, and set us up for the next step of a complete evaluation. In a few weeks, M2's going to have "playtime" with a couple ladies who will do a full eval then give us the results. The woman today said she's obviously very intelligent, we just need to get her to start using more words. It's expected that she'll be on track with everything else.

After the evaluation, our intake coordinator sets M2 up with a therapy plan. The good thing about this organization is that they find it important that the child is in their own environment for therapy. The therapist comes out and word with her and show A and I things we can do with her the rest of the time.

The plan right now is to get all this set up and maybe even get a session or two in before Baby2 arrives. At the least, we'll be ready to go as soon as things settle down with him.

Baby2's Room
Last week, we finally narrowed down the choices of paint colors for Baby2's room to four. Once we get those up on the wall we'll (hopefully) be able to pick one. Right now, there's a futon in there so we can't paint the whole room. The futon needs to go in the family room, which has another couch in it. That one needs to go in the living room which--you guessed it-- also has a couch in it. The hospice we're donating one couch to comes next week, then we can play musical couches and start painting. You can read more about the plans for the nursery here.

At my weekly appointment the doctor said Baby2 is on track. The only downside is that he hasn't flipped yet--he's still breech. He's got a few weeks left to make the flip and I'm hoping he does as I don't want a C-section for a number of reasons (the big one being surgery and I don't mix, at all).

A and I checked out the other choice of hospital for labor and delivery finally. M2 got to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa going to the pumpkin patch, animal park and out to dinner while I was busy with the tour and doctor appointment. It's a good thing we did the tour since we've decided we like the hospital better than the one we were thinking of using. As long as Baby2 doesn't come earlier than 38 weeks, we plan to use the one we toured. The big selling point for me was all private rooms and wireless monitors so I won't have to be strapped down uncomfortably to a bed for hours. That part was NOT fun with M2 and I think labor would have gone faster than the 41.5 hours it took had I been able to move around. I also can't get comfortable in beds sitting up or lying on my back--which is the position I got stuck in so the doctors could have the monitors work.

With less than seven weeks to go, there is still plenty to do on our lists!