I have been trying to figure some things out lately about Alexa and her various developmental issues. We have been going to physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy for over a year now, and while we are making progress in Speech and OT, it seems like we are kind of stuck on the physical therapy front. We have been working on the same skills for most of the year, and not seeing a lot of progress. I have asked her early intervention teacher and therapists for a meeting to see what we can figure out, and I asked for sources of information about kids like Alexa. The speech therapist sent me some links to sites that were helpful, but I started running into the problem of not having a name for Alexa's condition. At one point we were told that Alexa has global development delay. However, the closest thing I can find on is something called Pervasive Developmental Delay-Not Otherwise Specified, or PDD-NOS, which is within the Autism Spectrum Disorders. The problem with this diagnosis is that it Alexa lacks key symptoms of Autistic disorders, and she has other symptoms not covered within this grouping, physical developmental delays for one. I did find another thing called Sensory Processing Disorder, which seems to fit Alexa better. I also took her to the chiropractor in Eugene this morning, and he told me some other things which support this. Unfortunately, it seems that we aren't going to get the perfect label, and there isn't going to be a book to tell me exactly what Alexa needs and how to provide it. Fortunately there are a lot of treatment possibilities for the symptoms Alexa does have. The chiropractor said there have been a lot of new articles in the journals about the cerebellum and its importance in coordination of not only the musculoskeletal system, but emotions and other things as well. He suggested that Alexa's sensory nervous system is not accurately relaying information, so she doesn't always have a good sense of where her limbs are for one thing..we are supposed to provide extra stimulation, to help her turn somersaults and do cross body skills like crawling. The SPD is when you can't process sensory information correctly, noise, pain, heat, cold can feel five times weaker or 5 times stronger than normal.
I apologize for the disjointed post. I have been getting a lot of information in the past few days, and I may not be relaying it in a coherent fashion, but I guess you can google for more info..