things I now know

I couldn't sleep again last so I laid in bed for hours thinking of all the things I know enough to know was an issue. I wonder if Madeline hadn't of been the first child, if I would of picked up on her difficulties sooner. I do think I would of, especially if Gabrielle had come first. I know all children do things at different speeds, but she is doing things that Madeline was not doing for years and in some cases, not doing that much of still. Madeline has been a hard child to diagnose, all the therapists so far has commented on that. She has compensated well in many areas. 

Gabrielle colors holding her crayons like anyone would write, Madeline still prefers to hold everything in a fist, if I can get her to attempt to hold it the normal way, then she has a hard time drawing, etc... It's a lack of lack motor skills in her fingers, but she doesn't have that lack any where else, she is quite agile. Gabrielle has developed an interest in letters, she can identify an E, B, and a couple others. She loves when someone will sit and do Starfall.com with her, she will sing along to the songs, and I catch her saying the sounds the letters make before the site gets to that point. Madeline still has no idea that an A makes an aaaaa noise, despite her playing with that site for years.  Yesterday during therapy, the therapist brought out rhyming word puzzles, now Madeline does not get rhyming words, yet she put them all together on the first try and was able to identify most of them. To anyone else it would appear that she knew what she was doing, I know and the therapist knows that is she very visual. She compensated from not knowing the words, by quickly scanning the puzzles and being able to piece them together in her head before she even started. The point that they rhyme means nothing to her. She often does things like that. If given a choice between several letters and asked to pick out a certain one, then she grasps for any other clues, is one a different size, color, etc... She will remember that the yellow letter is supposed to be a B and then for the rest of the time when confronted with a yellow letter, usually will answer B. If you give her a blue B, then she might or might not recognize it. Gabrielle doesn't care what color a B is, or if a E is upper case or lower case, she knows what it is. Madeline most of the time now knows what an E is, but never a lower case one, but she can describe it in perfect detail to you, she just has no idea what this E and this e are the same thing. 

For this week, she has been identifying most of the letters in her first name and counting to 20! A couple times she went to 30, but it is rare that she can. Today is our last day in Denver and at the center. I have parent meetings there, her last therapy session, and the feedback meeting the last eval that we did this week, I very curious about that one.