Early diagnosis - what do I do?

If I had one wish as a therapist and practice owner, it would be that parents with newly diagnosed children knew where to go first. When we are concerned about our children, we typically go to the pediatrician first. If the Dr is well informed, he or she may refer the child to some type of child specialist such as a Developmental pediatrician or a psychologist or even neurologist depending on the issue. As parents, we come home and read everything and anything we can on the Internet about the behaviours we are seeing in our child and then talk to those people we trust or know, searching for opinions and insight into whether there is a problem or what the problem may be.

Once at the specialist, we expectantly sit down waiting to hear some type of revelation about why we are seeing these issues in this little being that we created. Voila! Your child is ...... regardless of what we are told, many times we hear or don't hear up to 60% of what the specialist has said. We may hear the "Autism, ADHD, Learning Disabled, Asbergers Syndrome .."By the time we get home we have only retained 15% of that 60%. Hence a mumble jumble of words float around our brains and merge into some type of garbled output when trying to talk to all of those beloved people whose opinions we asked for initially. Many times the "diagnosis" is such a shock that the emotional side of the brain goes into fight/flight/fright - a natural, normal, healthy place to be. The hard part of this is that we still have to function "normally", but don't have any strategies to work with. The specialist usually provides a list of services and places to go and a couple of recommendations that may or may not make sense. Another issue that we deal with is having to move "quickly" through the system of health care and services related to a specific diagnosis. Except that my child is not a diagnosis. He is a living, breathing, acting out little being who shows some quirky stuff that doesn't look quite right or like his peers.
What the specialist does not usually talk about is how to cope with all of this. Receiving a diagnosis of any kind is tough. We go through a range of emotions and thoughts : "what did I do to make my child like this?", "is this my fault or my spouse's fault" " oh, he will just grow out of this!". Denial, guilt, fear and hurt are only a few of the emotions that rally through our heads in a tornado type fashion... but where to go from here?

With so many programs available today, how do you know which one is right for your child? I hope through this blog, that I can talk about the many areas to look at and consider when building your child's team. You are their advocate, their team leader and the head of their campaign.
Therapists are definitely under rated! What I mean by that is when there is a strong team of occupational, speech and physical therapists involved in your campaign, that is where you will see the most bank for your buck.
Let's take a little step back. There are really only 3 areas red flagging us that something may be "out of sync". Motor delays, speech difficulties or social/behavioural difficulties. Those are the indicators that something is different. Well, child development is a layered process. One layer is dependent on all the others to develop fully.

Motor skills are learned. They occur in a hierarchical fashion starting with reflexes like we see in tiny infants and move up the developmental ladder of "milestones". Speech development is dependant on how well motor skills have developed resulting in sequencing sounds, then words, sentences and conversations. Social, behavioural and emotional development are intricate layers that rely on both motor and language development. My point here is that by the time parents notice red flags, there are layers of areas that could be addressed to improve those issues we are seeing and they all have to be addressed at some point. These areas function as a whole, not independently.

The latest research shows that cognitive development is dependant on social and emotional IQ and taking that a step further by incorporating play through motor and language skills is critical in developing these higher level skills.

So we come back to the original question: where do I start. Start with your therapists that use a holistic, combined approach at looking at the brain and body after looking at your child and their needs. This will provide the necessary opportunities to help you the parent and your child develop and work through the areas needed to develop a well rounded child. This of course builds our confidence in our parenting skills and allows us to be parents!

The therapist is the single best person who will be strong force in facilitating weekly changes. These changes are generally slow and small resulting in a combination of improvements. Another critical reason why you have to be a strong part of the your child's team. Step-by-step functional changes are made that affect daily living skills, communication, social development and learning skills relating to cognitive development.

Medications are quick fixes and sometimes they are very effective, however neurological development is dependant on strengthening brain function which is the super computer of a person. Without a duel-core processor, the right and left sides of the brain can't function well together. A therapy team will work on getting those skills to function well. That is key to making life long changes.

Feel free to call us or email with any questions regarding this topic. We are happy to help you through this journey!

Shelley