Dcb turned 2yo last month. He:
~ still pulls his legs up when getting a diaper change
~ has his hands in his mouth always
~ has only said one word -" uh-oh."
~ cannot follow even the simplest of instruction.
~ Has smiled one time in the year I have been watching him, he's pretty much expressionless unless he is crying.
~ cannot see what is going on around him and predict what he needs to do (i.e. will see me setting lunch plates at the table but not run over to the table like all of the other kids.)
~ cannot get himself on a chair at the kid size table
~ plays with the same 2 trucks all day long everyday
~ will grab any bottle or pacifier he sees and use it, even though he doesn't use those anymore

If you just saw him you probably wouldn't think anything was wrong right away, but if you compare him to other kids............?

What do you think?

I've told his mom about a screening the school district does but she didn't take him. I loathe telling them I think something is wrong. They already lost one baby, mom has had a brain tumor, dad just got back from a yearlong deployment.

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Yes I would be concerned, but there isn't much else you can do. I mean you could be more forceful about it, but you need to fill your other spot first it sounds like. Why must the parents make this so hard.

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I am a squeaky wheel that gets the cheese.

I have one that is 2.5 still zero words in vocab, does not like to play with anyone and does not connect with anyone. stay emotionless all day long.

for about 3months every day at drop off and pick up I ask dcp, so did you give the SLP a call yet? The kid is PT

Eventually one day DCD says you arent going to give up on this are you and I said NOPE. It's my job to make sure I am meeting the needs of every child and your childs needs have not been met yet. I need for you to get the evaluation and if I am wrong, I will never mention another word. they got the eval and when the diagnosis came back they came in hugged me and thanked me.

In your heart of hearts if you really see something wrong, do all you can. But know that not every parent is going to accept it.

we can't save them all unfortunately, but we can try

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Yes!

And, YES. At the very least that kiddo should have 50 words and that's just a starting point from your list...

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Agree with pp- and you are his voice since his parents aren't realizing what is going on. In lieu of all their personal issues at this time, you could take a gentle approach, "Dcm, I was completing dcb's six month progress report, and I am finding that he hasn't hit his (whatever) milestone in (whatever)." I personally would start with the speech, and ask how many words have been observed at home- you can mention fingers in mouth might be hindering speech, and strongly recommend at least a speech evaluation. They will recommend more testing if there are any red flags, but at least you will have gotten the foot in the door.

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that is a great starting point....this is where I started.

Before I did an eval I called dcp and said that I was concerned that DCB does not have any words in his vocab yet. Based off of the developmental scales, he should have at least 50 words that he knows how to resue over and over again.

I asked DCP how many words do you think he has in his vocab. they said about 4. so i read and sent to them the ages and stages eval and asked them to see their doc. they also seemed a little worried, but not much.

I told them over this next month lets work together to see how many old words and new words DCK creates in his vocabulary AND uses them again.

over that month we saw zero. So I did the evaluation on him with my life coach and he scored a zero on the eval with speech/communication.

he does not even point to things and try to engage.

after that I showed them where he should be and where he was at. I told them that I wanted a second eval with a SLP.

this is when they dragged their feet......it was then I decided that everyday I was going to kindly mention something about it until they got the evaluation done.

I have not been given the exact diagnosis, but the parents will have the SLP come to my house to work with DCK here. I will find that all out when she comes.

I was told that they did diagnosis him as autistic, I did not get detailed results.....

maybe starting with an ASQ would be good or asking if they have gone to their 2 year PEDI appt and done an ASQ.....

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