Reports and questions

I got reports from Janey's 3 specialists today. The speech one was mixed---fairly positive, saying a lot that Janey was talking more in the last few weeks, which is true. But it's hard to measure and quantify her speech issues. They said she talks in an average of 5 word utterances, which is probably true, but those 5 words often make very little sense, or do in such a cryptic way you have to be a mind reader to understand them. They said she is starting to greet known adults by name and with a wave, which is once in a while true, but not consistantly at all. I love the speech therapist, it's not that I don't like what she says, more that it's just so hard to put on paper what is so off about Janey's talking. A good example today was her yelling out "I made a big Itsy bitsy Spider". I turned and saw she had wrapped yarn around her feet and was all tangled up, like a spider web. It's that round about way she often expresses herself. She also wanted her little cloth chair off her crib today, so just kept saying "Everybody sit in their seats" without motioning at all to the chair, I just figured it out by chance. It's like the connection that allow people to say things in a straightfoward way just aren't there.

The OT had a more discouraging report. Basically it said all Janey wants to do at OT is play with shaving cream, and she has little attention span for anything else, shows no pre-writing skills or drawing skills, etc. It made me want to say...put the damn shaving cream away for good, what does she need it for? She's not tactilely defensive, she is FINE with touching anything. I have never met the OT and hear only wonderful things about her, and I'm not trying to put her down, this is just frustration talking.

The PT was very positive and I agree there. I've seen so much progress in that area.

Janey says "I'm stuck" a million times a day. I think it's her description of how her mind feels when she gets upset--like the words are stuck, she's stuck in a feeling she doesn't want to have, a tune is stuck in her head, she is just stuck. Then she usually says "Body help me" (somebody help me). I wish I could do so better.