Recently

Our seven year old daughter had some language delays as a pre-schooler and now that my son is two I decided I'd better have him screened. He had his first tubes surgery at 6 months after multiple ear infections and a failed hearing test. Just last May he had another set placed at Primary Children's Hospital since he failed both a tympanogram and hearing booth sound test. As well his adenoids were taken out. This poor little one never has time to recover from surgery before we are back in. So far he's also had two hydrocele hernia surgeries making a total of four procedures in two years. And at the end of this month we go in to get his teeth worked on. They estimate the surgery will be an hour and a half long and cost us around $4000.00 My husband is self-employed and our current health insurance has no dental coverage. So we applied for different health insurance this month and were denied.

We are currently fighting the underwriters but in the mean time, we are paying out of pocket and filling out Medicaid-D paperwork for our youngest two children. Our oldest two qualified and I pray things will fall into place.

Today I took our 27 month old to an Early Intervention screening recommended by our Pediatrician. He was put on a watch list a year ago after struggling in social/ emotional areas. This time he scored at 27 months cognitive, 24 months gross motor skills. 24 months fine motor, 28 months social emotional (yay) 21 months (slight delay) in self help, and here some the part where mom shed a couple tears. His language expressive is at 1 year 10 months a mild delay and Receptive language is a 1 year 8 months which is a moderate delay. We qualify for services. And we are offically the parents of another special needs child.

It's always a double edged word to hear that. Hooray, we are getting the help he needs, hooray, mom trusts her mom gutt and took him in again. But it is so sad to see him miss things on his tests and struggle. One thing that kid has going for him is that he is a joy in my life. He is smart and adorable and I love him with all my heart. Sometimes I wonder why these children were sent to me, because if there is one are I feel inadequate in, it is my parenting. But, hey I will try my best to make sure they make it back home the best little people they can be. I pray Their Father in Heaven will keep prompting me and gently nudging me along the way to trust my instincts and realize they need more help than most.

We will have an IFSP next week and set up services. Here are some of the resources the County screener recommended for our family since she has worked with all of my four children now doing tests:

A Mind At A Time by Mel Levine http://www.allkindsofminds.org/
Driven To Distraction book on ADHD
No Mind Left Behind on regulation
Smart But Scattered book on executive functioning and getting the frontal lobe to function
The Listening Program Does anyone here in Utah know of any providers for this? I'd like to try it with our children since they all struggle in listening comprehension.