Julia's Appointment

Last week, Julia had an appointment with her developmental pediatrician. As usual, I was very impressed with the doctor. She has a way of not making you feel like you are a complete idiot. It's a good thing.

Anyway, the doctor gave Julia the same test she gave her last year. Basically it's a book full of pictures. It starts off with simply asking Julia what a single picture is. It goes from there to a multiple picture page and she asks Julia to find something specific ("Where is the red fire engine?"). It progresses further to asking Julia to show her the "girl that is crying" or "the people who are sharing." It goes even further to a blank page, in which the doctor asks Julia to come up with something without a visual aid, only verbal. An example would be, "Tell me what is black and white, lives on a farm and makes milk?" Anyway, as is the case at school, it is quite clear that Julia does not understand what is being asked of her sometimes, and is also prone to being distracted by her own internal workings. She either loses focus (but not in an obvious way, like looking around the room or whatever) or becomes slightly fixated on whatever she might have been talking about before.

It was noticeable enough that the doctor actually called it a "receptive language disorder," which means that while her speech and expressive language are clear and age appropriate, she does not understand what is being said to or asked of her all of the time. When I told the doctor about some of the social concerns I had for Julia, she told me that I would be surprised how much a language disorder can overlap in to many areas of one's life. She said that Julia could be intuitively smart enough to not place herself in social situations of age appropriate nature simply because she recognizes that she has some difficulties around social language skills and knows that it may not be a comfortable situation for her. She recommended presenting Julia with smaller social settings (like going out for ice cream with just one other friend or whatever) so that she can "practice" these skills. She also noted that Julia did a good job of "hiding" the language issues because most kids with these types of concerns are no where near as chatty as Julia is.

Anyway, I am looking forward to getting the detailed report that she always sends to Julia's regular pediatrician and us, in which she details her findings, impressions and recommendations.