Just wanted to intro myself

I've been kind of lurking around this board for a while, and just thought I'd introduce myself.

I'm Nadine, and the lucky Momma to two wonderful kids. My son, Evan, was diagnosed with a moderate speech delay and moderate language delay. He babbled ALL the time, but even by close to 3 yrs old, his words were totally garbled and nonsense, and only a few of his 'words' were sounds he was using consistently for the same object.

He's being seen through a program in our city called WordPlay. It's a preschool speech and language program that assesses and treats children with any sort of delays in that area, in the hopes that they are ready to take on school by the time they are school-age. It's a wonderful program and Evan's speech has really started to get so much better. He had an assessment done last September and was found to have a speech and language delay. At that point, they gave us some work to try at home with him for 6 months and then we went for his second assessment. His speech had gotten slightly better with some work at home, but he was then booked in for 8 ST sessions, once per week.

He completed that 8-week block and now we take another 'break' with us continuing to work at home with him. In another 3-5 months we go back for another eval and then probably one more 8 week block. 

After only this first 8-week block, he's worked SO hard and improved SO much that it's hard to believe he's even the same child. I'm really proud of the work he's done. However, I think there are still some struggles to come yet. 

To backtrack a little, I've had concerns about his speech and some behaviours since he was quite young - before 2 yrs old for sure. But I kept waiting it out and waiting it out because everyone around me would say "Oh boys always develop slower, don't worry" or "He's fine, kids are all different, don't worry". So I waited. At 2.5 finally at the suggestion of our nurse practitioner (we see a NP instead of a MD for general health stuff) we brought Evan to WordPlay. I'm glad I finally did, especially now seeing how quickly he's improved in the speech area. 

Anyhoo - our SLP mentioned that some of his behaviours may just be caused by his frustrations in speaking and in understanding what we're saying, and the hope was that as his speech improved, so would his behaviour. 

However, what ended up happening is that in the ST sessions, seeing Evan in a focused and isolated activity, we were able to see a few things that were worrisome to us. 

So, we go to see our NP on the 23rd of this month to get a referral to a dev.pedi so that we can get an extra set of eyes on Evan, and try to figure out what, if anything, is going on with him. Some of the things, and I swear I'm trying to keep this brief haha, that are concerns for us are:

*he can't seem to focus on things, not just attention wise, but eye contact as well. If I watch him being asked to do something or look at something, he has a lot of trouble actually doing that. It's like his eyes are having trouble resting on what he's looking at. If that makes any sense. His attention is also not quite what it should be. He could go MAYBE 15 mins into a 1 hour session with his SLP before we would totally lose him. And you can almost FEEL him "click off" when he's had enough, his eyes stop looking at things, he looks down and MAY look around just with his eyes but will keep his head down. When he's hit his max attention span, he almost starts to look like an animal trying to get away. Luckily, our SLP was amazing with him and would totally follow his lead (as we assumed she would) and even if that meant changing activities seconds after starting one, after a while he seemed to trust her that she wouldn't force him into tasks he couldn't complete. By the end of the 8 week block, we were getting 20-25 mins out of him before he'd click off, which was an improvement but still not great.

*he's extremely physical - not violent, but just never stops moving. His eyes are barely open in the mornings before he's up out of the bed and he doesn't stop going until bedtime. I mean, this is a 3 yr old thing too probably, but for 90% of the day he almost feels frantic. 

*he shows a LOT of the signs of SPD - always been a picky eater, needs to be touched (weight on his body with my arm) in order to fall asleep, always moving, jumping, sensory seeking behaviours, basically we could go through the checklist online and say yes to SO many of the behaviours

*along with his speech and language issues, he really seems to have trouble just understanding what we're saying or asking. if we ask him questions he'll either just say "yeah" (his answer to everything, no matter the quesion) or he'll stare at us like we're speaking another language. Sometimes he'll just repeat the question back to us (he's an amazing mimic, and will copy a lot of what we do/say) At first we thought he had just inherited my stubborn streak but again, having the chance to watch him in his ST sessions, I really and truly think he just isn't understanding what we're asking of him. It's almost like he doesn't understand things contextually. He doesn't seem to "get" when we're being silly, or making jokes. he laughs easily enough, and all, but certain kinds of humour are just totally lost on him - that his same-aged peers all are able to 'get'.

I won't go through every single thing right now, but at this point we're going to talk to the pedi about looking at Evan's behaviours and find out if there is anything we can do to help him. Our days are just constant chaos and frustration and I think I'm at the limit of what I can do on my own - so it's time to expand Evan's circle of care providers and see what we find. 

I'm frustrated a lot of the time, and scared for Evan, and worried. And I'm SO tired of hearing "Oh he's a boy, he'll be fine and he'll grow up on his own schedule". I listened to them all when it was about his speech, and now looking back I wish I'd dealt with his speech/language a year earlier than I did, when I first noticed soemthing was up. Seeing how much improvement he's made, and how quickly, makes me feel guilty that I waited this long to tackle it. 

I won't be making the same mistake this time. Something tells me that there is something else at play with him, and so now we start down the road to figuring out what it may be. I just want him to have the best life he can have - and in order to give him that, it's time for my husband and I to go to work and do what we have to do for him I guess. 

So. I'll be around this forum a bit - it's already been a HUGE source of information and even reassurance for me. I don't know where our road is about to lead us, but it's good to have this board. I'm sure I'll have questions and such as I go along. 

Sorry this was so long, just trying to cover at least a bit of our dealings with Evan, up to now. I feel like there's so much to talk about and ask about when it comes to my son - and in my real life, there are not many people who are truly willing (or able I guess) to just listen to me.

Thanks for reading!