Some good news....

At last we've received the letter from the paediatrician which sums up her report on Sasha following the initial assessment. It really documents all the answers I gave to the questions she asked, so no real surprises in there for us. We did discover that there was a format to the time she tried playing with Sasha - apparently this is called a Griffiths assessment, and it shows the paediatrician was observing her behaviour closely and monitoring what she could do during that time.

The following sentence was probably the only confusing bit - 'it is difficult to get an accurate assessment of Sasha's developmental skills due to her difficulties accessing the assessment.'
It goes on to say 'her skills do however appear to be age appropriate. Clearly her language is significantly delayed and she also presents with highly self-directed behaviours, difficulties with transition and poor social interaction'. So we're not really much the wiser, but I guess it does just put down in black and white what we already know.

The good news is that they have sent through a new appointment date which I've to call about on Monday - the bad news is that the day and time is already fixed, and I can't see lunchtime as being a great time to get much co-operation from Sasha if there needs to be more tests!

Ho Hum. At bedtime tonight I was thinking about Sasha's speech, and what is most noticeable is that she struggles with 'S' and 'T', which is a shame considering her sister is called Tamsin and her favourite toy Terry - if only we'd known! Tamsin was re-named by Sasha several weeks ago, to 'Gah-oo'. We've no idea why (although the difficulty with T must have something to do with it!), but it is at least obvious who she means when she calls that. They don't play together often, but have great fun and lots of giggles when they do as it usually involves chasing of some sort. We haven't gone into huge details with Tamsin but we have mentioned that Sasha is a little different, and we do ask for Tamsin's understanding in some situations. Often Tamsin is very good with her but there will always be times it doesn't seem fair. After a lovely swimming session, just me and Tamsin today, she blurted out as we got home that I cared more about Sasha than her. Now I'm sure this was said more as a throw away comment for a bit of attention, rather than because she really believes it, but it is of course still on my mind and I feel like I need to make extra sure we make lots of time and do lots of nice things with Tamsin. Swimming was fun today (apart from having to clear the pool due to floating poo!) and Tamsin did well with floating on her back. I'm keen to start her on lessons so she doesn't fall behind for her age, but she's still really just too tired from school. Summer term hopefully.

Anyway, back to Sasha's speech. Did I mention she can count to 10 (and to 7 in Spanish) and then from 10 backwards?! She was doing that in bed tonight, not sure why. Six is probably the clearest number, although it's 'ix', and seven is 'seben' - or is it 'eben', I'm not quite sure now I've thought about it! Must remember to take more video of her to capture things like this. She can tell me all of Dora's friends, although it's 'I-ha' rather than 'Isa', 'Boo' for 'Boots' and 'ico' rather than 'Tico'. Dora is quite a clear word though! A new phrase she has learned is 'my turn' and it's pleasing to see she seems to understand what that means (although just like any toddler she's none too keen on waiting for it :) ). Still heard nothing from speech therapy though, and have now reached the stage where I am keen to get on and do something to help Sasha communicate rather than sitting around waiting for appointments. Also need to speak to the hearing people again to fix a re-test and see if grommets are needed, oh what joy. More research to be done I feel.

At least our little girls are happy and healthy, and for that I'm very grateful.