A New Week

Most of my session with Elizabeth yesterday was spent discussing Friday's evaluation, and how both of us were so disappointed in the lack of direction I was given. I truly feel that it was not a fair evaluation of Raquel. All others were done at home, where she could be observed in a familiar environment. For Regional to assess her by confining her to one small room and giving her a couple boring toys was not right. But, again, it's Regional - where I am just a case number and the sensitivity is long gone.

Elizabeth is out of therapy hours and was only supposed to come by for 30 minutes. Instead, she ended up staying nearly two. She and I have a special bond that started the minute she called me to schedule Raquel's first session. She has two kids the same ages as mine and we relate on so many different levels. She even has a black lab! She was really concerned with how Mike and I digested everything over the weekend and wanted to make sure we were doing okay.

For me, I have come to terms with the fact that I've got a beautiful little girl with some form of a disorder or disability. That's hard to deal with, but it is what it is. My focus now is doing everything in my power to get her well, to keep her happy, and to follow what my heart feels is the right thing to do. I'm hoping that Raquel will be given additional therapy hours with her current therapists, however, if the ABA program is offered, I will take it.

Raquel had a great speech session. Mary gave us nursery rhyme cards to sing with, which she loved playing with. She was very engaged throughout the entire session - holding up items to show me, teasing us, laughing and basically just having a really good time. Mary showed me how the PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) works, but is not convinced this is the right program for Raquel. PECS is a program that brings out communication by using pictures. Raquel would be given a chart with pictures on them and then is trained to hand me the pictures of what she is wanting until she is able to say the word or phrase. I personally feel that it would add confusion since she is telling me some things. Mary said that we would hold off on it for now, still pretty confident that Raquel has a much more functional vocabulary than she is using.