Flynnie starting therapy

Flynnie is my second born son. I have noticed that something was off with him for awhile. He was not making the same noises that Preston had made in the same time period. I noticed that he also was not doing other milestones in the same time period. Around 9 months of age, he started doing something that I found very concerning. He would go on his hands and knees and rock back and forth. He would bang his head against the door or the wall. He has caused thickened skin in that area of his forehead. He has also worn off the skin before and had scabs form. He has done this multiple times a day, everyday, including now.

I have been trying to get Flynn in for therapy for over a year now. I'm very thankful to now be in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, where there are a lot of medical options. It was difficult, initially, to get Flynn into therapy. I originally had Flynn's "establish care" appointment in the end of March. However, then COVID happened, and he actually is not establishing care until Thursday of this week. Through a lot of phone calls, and working with an amazing medical assistant named Stephanie (pictured below), we had referrals placed to various locations until we found one with a reasonable copay.

The place that we are currently going to is called PediaPlex. It is great, because it is really close to where we live, and they have multiple subspecialties located in the same place. Flynn has had his first evaluations with both speech therapy and with occupational therapy. I finally received his report today.

From speech therapy, he has been given the diagnosis of Mixed receptive-expressive language disorder. He was administered the Preschool Language Scale 5th Edition (PLS-5) and was found to have deficits in many domains. His auditory comprehension score was a 50, in the 1st percentile, age equivalent of 10 months. His expressive communication score was 50, 1st percentile, age equivalent of 5 months. His total language score was 50, 1st percentile, age equivalent of 7 months. He has a few long term goals including: client will increase use of expressive language skills through mastery of short-term goals within a 6-12 month period, client will increase use of receptive language skills through mastery of short term goals within a 6-12 month period. Currently, our homework is to practice the "M" and "B" sounds with Flynn, because they are at the front of the mouth and use the lips with speech. We are also attempting to teach him the ASL sign for "more", that way he can communicate when he wants more food.

"More"

For occupational therapy, he was administered the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales-2 (PDMS-2). He was found to be in the 37% for grasping (average) and 16% for visual-motor interpretation (below average). Overall, Flynn does demonstrate sensory sensitivities in the areas of Propioceptive and Vestibular processing. He seeks out movement (climbing, constant movement, rocking) for sensory input and to improve his self-regulation level. Flynn's difficulty to adequately process and regulate sensory input directly impacts his motor skills, speech and language skills, and activity level. For homework on the OT side, we are working on: rolling a ball back and forth between him and someone else, and we are working on holding onto a surface and jumping using his knees and hips.

It's all for this little guy. We are rooting for him and will help him as much as we can.