Finally ....

we have some answers regarding my newly turned 4 year old.
We've struggled with some issues we noticed for a long time ... even as an infant, she was slow to lift her head, slow to move, slow to do anything at all .... after a doctor change, several evaluations she recieved therapy through Early Intervention. She was graduated from the program at 3 (because the program ends at 3 and her therapists all thought she was doing well).
Well, she was doing well, well so we kind of I think tricked ourselves into thinking.
So, we booked the appointment with the neuorologist, at the request and prompting of her foot doctor. Dh and I really were surprised at first when foot doc recommended this, but then we thought about it, and yes, there are things still going on! And she had come so far I think we were willing to overlook what was still there.
Then we started to notice things became more prominently over the summer and were glad we had the appointment.
Anyway, today was said appointment. I am so glad we went. The doctor was fabulous. Really listened to our concerns, took us seriously, and has come up with what I feel pretty sure describes her.
He did agree that she is an intelligent child and probably seems like everyone else most of the time. But when we started to look at some behaviors more closely, he agreed, things were not right. He then explained most kids are diagnosed by checklists - checklists for ADHD or for Autism, etc ... you can just go down the list, check off symptoms and spot quickly what is going on. He said my daughter is NOT a typical case, nor could her issues really be spotted on checklists used by most doctors. Yeah, we figured she was not a "typical" anything!
First he thinks she has Nonverbal Learning Disorder (NLD). I have only looked at a few sites on it, but it has me going, yep, uh-huh, that's her, oh yes, that's her too! I feel very confident that this may in fact be a large part of what is going on with her.
He also thinks she may have word finding difficulties. Apparently this is extremely rare in anyone under the age of 8 (in fact when I tried to find out more about it tonight on-line I was only able to find information for kids 6 and over!). So, she will have a full blown speech evaluation to really try to pinpoint if that is what is going on with her speech.
We will also go out for an EEG to make sure there isn't anything going on in her brain that could be causing any of these issues.
I feel glad to finally have someone say here's what going on with her, here's what we do. It's very helpful to 1)know I'm not crazy, there are things going on with her and 2)we have probably identified the issue and have a plan in place to deal with it now.
Yeah! We have a plan to follow now. Although I admit, I am dreading doing an EEG with her. We are going to do it at a children's hospital and he said they are pros at getting hesitant children to do it. So, hopefully it will all work out in the end.