And the Dance Goes On

Here's a video of the kids dancing.



Today I took Sam to the school for a speech screening. As expected, Terri thinks he has a language problem and will probably qualify for speech therapy. So that's not a huge surprise. What did surprise me was that she said we should ask the school for information on ADHD and what we can do at home to help prep him for school. He's supposed to start pre-k next fall, but we may be enrolling him sooner, depending on how the formal testing goes on the 26th and how the school, the classroom teacher, and Terri want to handle this. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Terri brought up ADHD, but I am. I honestly handn't considered the possibility. Once she brought it up, and discussed why she thought we should work with him, it made sense, and this is exactly why a mother can't and shouldn't attempt to diagnose her own child and why I asked that Terri do it.

In an odd, funny way, I thought the screening was going really well. So well that I honestly thought she was going to come over to me and tell me he's fine. Instead, she said we definitely would continue with formal testing. I was so pleased with Sam; he actually listened to them, did as they asked, and this is why moms don't get to diagnose! He acted just like he does at home; a little hard to keep on task. He'd look at what they told him to, but just as quickly focus back on a toy robot that was in the room (of course, in Sam's world, everything takes a back seat to robots). I wanted to say, "what do you mean? he did great for you!!! He's never done so well when I'm in the room before!" He never listens to anything when I'm with him, except at home when there's nobody else around. Sam also didn't hold his pencil in an age-appropriate grip. I know Sam's articulation is just fine, and I'm hoping this means he'll be able to catch up on his speech. Right now it breaks my heart to listen to two year olds speaking these nice sentences, clearly, concisely (for two year olds, anyway) and my son is about to fall behind his baby sister in speech. I almost wish it was just an articulation issue - that always struck me as a cake walk, but Sam's never had problems producing sounds, his problem is using words in meaningful ways, together. Also, I've had a lot of other people ask me about Sam, and when I was going to get him tested, and I really wanted these tests to prove to everyone, including myself, that he's normal, he's fine. So I maintain, he's normal. For Sam. Now we're just going to find out what that normal is.