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Today went very well. we were up and out of the house at 6:15am. Both of us are not morning people so it was a miracle that we were as functioning as we were this morning. We hit some traffic but found where we needed to be in time. I'm not going to go on and on about the little details because i just don't want to bore you with all of the language, so I'll give you the basics. After a day of testing and asking me questions the experts have officially diagnosed Daniel with the following...

Developmental Coordination Disorder- Basically children with DCD have difficulty mastering simple motor activities, such as tying shoes or going down stairs, and are unable to perform age-appropriate academic and self-care tasks. Some children may experience difficulties in a variety of areas while others may have problems only with specific activities. Children with DCD usually have normal or above average intellectual abilities. However, their motor coordination difficulties may impact their academic progress, social integration and emotional development. You can read more about DCD here.


next we have...


Global Developmental Delay

Simply put Global developmental delay means that a child is developing more slowly than other children of the same age in all areas of development. So really it's just a fancy term to say that Daniel is developing behind his peers.

And lastly ...

Mixed Receptive-Expressive Language Disorder
Basically a fancy term for saying that Daniel is delayed in his speech communication and his understanding of language adn they have no idea why. Here is a website that explains it.

As for the childhood apraxia of speech, otherwise known as dyspraxia, the speech therapist said that Daniel does exhibit signs that that disability could very well be the issue, BUT he is to young to really give him that label just yet. They did encourage us to pursue the route of treating him like he did have apraxia. But they did say that at his age it's just to hard to diagnose properly.

So what does it all mean and how are we going to approach the next step? So the experts recommend more speech therapy and also that we need to add occupational therapy to his routine. They said that OT will help develop his fine motor skills as well as other areas that need strengthening. The also recommended that we get him into rock climbing! I wonder if insurance will pay for that since it is therapy. :)
On the speech front the next step is to introduce an electronic communication device to augment his speech. The speech therapist HIGHLY recommended that we get him a IPAD as they have many apps specifically for speech development. She showed me a ton of programs and i was convinced. Daniel's teachers at his school are already starting to implement it into his therapy there, so it just makes sense. Here is an article that talks about using the ipad as a speech therapy resource. I'm excited... i really think Daniel is going to really advance with something to help him communicate and he already does so well with electronics and figuring things out. God totally blessed us and we are being provided with one for FREE! THANK YOU JESUS. Because they are not cheap!

How am I feeling? Actually pretty good. It was funny because through the whole thing and them asking me questions, i just reminded myself that they don't know me, or how hard i work with my children or how much i love them. So i wasn't offended at all through it. And when it came time for them to tell me their findings, i was not surprised at all (i didn't think i would be because i already know he is behind) and it just gave me more confirmation on how to proceed. Though i always walk away from the specialist feeling sad that they really won't ever get to see the depth of beauty that my child possesses that i get to see. Nor do they look at his spirit and who he is in Christ, because really, that's the biggest part of the picture. And when I am thinking about Daniel and thinking about who he will be as he grows up and the people he will meet I am thinking about who Christ has made him to be and what great things God has planned for him. :)

What about schooling? Are you going to homeschool him? How much therapy will he be in? I love the program he is in right now and he will be able to stick with it until summer next year. After that there is nothing that i have found that i like therefore we will be full time homeschooling. IN all honesty they recommended that we seriously UP his therapy, but i disagree a little. I think it would be worse for him to be running ALL OVER the place to different "specialist" when a lot of what they do i could implement at home on a schedule and less stressed basis. I will be pursuing more therapy options for him but they will be home based as in the therapist comes to us at home and i just learn more about what needs to be done to help him myself. No i am not an OT or ST.. BUT if given the tools i can do a lot of work with him on a consistent and fun basis while still working with the specialist.

One more thing they recommended is that they want to send him to another clinic that will do even more indepth testing to rule out the possibility of autism. So they are sending in a referral for that and it will be about 9 month until we can get in for that. We are going to go through with it unless we change our minds before the 9 months comes up!

Whew.. so that's it for now.. I am tired and ready for a nice hot bath and maybe a little down time! NIGHT ALL! and THANK YOU for all of your prayers. I will most definitely keep you updated on how everything is going!