Due to Precious’ intellectual disability, she is moving along her own curve, but the good news is that she is moving onwards and upwards.
In order to get some funding for “personal growth and development support” and “family relief and support”, like house cleaning, we have to complete an annual application form for the government of Ontario. Among many, many other things, (the application is 7 pages of legal paper!) they ask us about a description of our child and how funding will help her.
I was filling out the application this week and it was a real eye-opener to see how much she has changed since last year. The application is like a snapshot of her development in December 2009. I wrote this last year;
“Precious’ speech is improving steadily. She still answers ‘yes’ to most questions, or will repeat what others say. She is just starting to initiate conversations independently and to talk about people who are not there. Her conversations tend towards concrete subjects. She can answer ‘where’, ‘who’ and sometimes ‘what’ questions, but can’t understand ‘why’ or ‘how’ questions. Some people can understand her, but the breadth of her conversation is extremely limited. She can talk about household objects, like clothing, food, etc., but she doesn’t understand concepts like ‘friend’, and she is aware of only the most basic emotions, like happy, sad and angry. She cannot easily communicate her needs unless they are basic things like food, TV, or toileting.”
This year, I wrote
“Precious’ speech is improving steadily. She has recently learned the concept of ‘future’. For her 5th birthday, she was able to understand that it was her birthday that was coming up and she remembered it for the days leading up to the party. She was excited that her friends were coming to the party and that she would be getting a cake. She understood what to do with the gifts and thanked her classmates for their presents. Her vocabulary and the scope of her conversations is still limited, but she is starting to understand and be able to respond to ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions after working on it all summer with the speech pathologist. She has even started to answer the questions when she watches Dora and she is getting better at getting the right answer. More people are able to understand her, although her topics of conversation are quite immature. She is becoming aware of a few more basic emotions, like happy, sad and angry, frustrated and disappointed.”
On days like these, it is easy to focus on the positive and get excited about my daughter’s future!