Laila's Journey

 I'm not sure I have ever written about the challenges we have been facing with Laila during the last year.  When most kids at the age of 2 or even before start to talk our lovely Laila did not.  She would say Dadda or Mama but that was about it.  Hayden was a really late talker so for the first part of 2nd year I wasn't overly concerned.  As it got closer to the her third birthday and speech still wasn't present I started raise the red flags with our doctor.  We are lucky to have a GP that listens to his patients and acts on their concerns.  He immediately put a request into have a speech assessment done but like every aspect of the healthcare system in Alberta it is tasked to it's limit.  The waiting list for these assessments is 6 months or more.

During the last six months I have worked with Laila everyday on her speech and we have seen great improvements. She has gone from maybe 10 works to a vocabulary of over 300.   With us not knowing when she would get in for the assessment we hired a private therapist to assess her and it was confirmed with her report that she is moderately delayed on single words but severe on the conversational portion.  While I knew this was going to be the outcome it still didn't lessen the pain when I received the report.  Laila is such a sweet outgoing girl but I know her speech is holding her back now as other kids just don't understand her so don't like to play with her.

Ironically, just a few days after the private assessment was done we got the call for the assessment from Alberta Health.  In the meantime, the girls had been back to our doctor for their yearly checkups and I raised yet another concern that I think Laila may in fact being hearing impaired to some degree.  While we know she is not deaf we suspect their could be partial hearing loss.  Even our doctor this time after listening to her speak suspects the same thing.  

So where we sit right now is she is scheduled for a speech assessment on July 7th and a hearing test on July 18th.  We are hoping that at the hearing test most of our questions will be answered and we can move forward.  Like every challenge we have faced with parenting we will face this one head on and get her what she needs.  Everyone is telling us that early intervention is key so the quicker we can get started the better.

The last six months have been tough but I know we are making progress and are praying that it will get better with the proper treatments.  I will update after we have her initials appointments.  I would love to hear from anyone who has kids go through similar situations it gives me encouragement.

Blessings,