No Words

Here is Elizabeth with her speech therapist, Jan. Elizabeth is thrilled with her--and with the bag of toys she brings with her. I liked Jan the minute I saw her.




Well I did manage to post a few photos last week...but those posts seemed to belie all of the drama unfolding around here.

As I mentioned in a prior post, we have been concerned about Elizabeth's language acquisition . She started speech and language therapy about a month ago and it was sheer luck that we got the speech therapist that we did.

I have always wondered if her hearing was part of the speech problem and we had her hearing evaluated by specialists earlier this year. She passed their tests and they said her hearing was,quote, "great".

I still had my serious doubts but heck ,when everyone including the doctors are telling you that your daughter can hear and that you should stop being a 'Jewish mother" , you really want to believe them. So I did.

Stupidly.

But I knew something wasn't right. Elizabeth learned certain things like the colors and she could count to ten, and various things that showed she was functioning well cognitively.

But she just wasn't picking up things as she should have been. And as Marty would tell everyone, "she just doesn't understand a lot of things that other kids her age understand.

Jan the speech therapist, then said to me, "Mary I don't usually go into my personal life, but I can tell you that my daughter is hearing impaired and she was misdiagnosed for over a year...and you are telling me so many things that I told people when she was Elizabeth's age."

She told us that her daughter had passed THREE hearing tests, because at this young age they test hearing with visual cues and if the child is clever they can pretty much pick up what they are supposed to do. She then gave us some small hearing tests to do with Elizabeth at home. She failed every one of them.

We also learned that the only way to truly test a toddler's hearing is to do an ABR (auditory brainstem response ) test while they are sleeping. This test allows for the testing of the child's hearing as well as differentiates between brain related hearing loss and ear related hearing loss.

Needless to say we did everything humanly possible to get Elizabeth this test ASAP. We had the test done on last Thursday and to make a long story much shorter, the good news is that Elizabeth does not have an auditory processing disorder--but the bad news is that she does have a significant hearing loss.

It is not good news. But we are also aware that the news could be much worse...and for that we are grateful.

I think since the day we had the diagnosis confirmed I have been wavering in and out of various stages of grief to some degree. At first I think there was some shock and denial (even though I had been thinking she had a hearing loss for some time) and then there has been a lot of guilt.

For a year I sensed her hearing wasn't quite right--and think deep inside I knew there was a problem--regardless of what everyone else told me. And then when the hearing test which confirmed her hearing was fine. And, even though I still doubted it--I accepted the test results. Of course I wanted to believe they were correct.

Friends and family have been kind to say that Elizabeth is lucky to have us as parents because we love her so much and take such good care of her. But the truth is I feel as if I have failed her in this case. I truly am angry with myself for not pushing through and demanding that she get more tests. I assume you will tell me that I should stop beating myself up--but the audiologist who confirmed her hearing loss had it right when she said, "I can tell you not to feel guilty but I am a mother too and I know whatever I say, you are still going to feel as if you could have done more." She is right and that is something I will just have to live with.

In the meantime as you can imagine, we are doing everything we can to make sure Elizabeth gets the best care and intervention possible... She has a long road ahead of her to catch up. Most of our brain development as it relates to language occurs before three years of age--and she has missed out on a very significant portion of that.

I have more information on the details of her hearing loss but I will do that another time. And the truth is that there is still a lot we have to learn about all of this. One thing I can tell you is that her hearing loss is estimated to be "moderate" and I am thinking and hoping that it is on the low end of moderate.

Elizabeth has an appt. with the ENT doctor on Tuesday and then likely sometime next week she will be fitted with hearing aids. All of the doctors have said that she will "catch up". It may take her a year or two but we will do all we can.

Interestingly, it was a week ago Friday that we determined Elizabeth had a hearing loss, and on Saturday I found myself watching Ted Kennedy's funeral--which you would think had no relation to Elizabeth's hearing loss. But for me it did. I heard Kennedy's son Teddy Jr. speak about losing his leg to cancer in the winter of his 12th year. During the first snowstorm that year his dad took out the snow sled and said to Teddy Jr, "let's go sledding". Teddy Jr. was hesitant but went ahead--he fell badly after the first try and cried that he couldn't do it and would never be able to do it because of his leg. His dad said, "you CAN do it and I don't care if we have to stay on this hill all day--you are going to sled down this hill. Teddy Jr. cried as he recounted " I did sled down that hill that day" and for him that was a powerful lesson that colored the rest of his life.

And...that was a powerful lesson for me and one that even further strengthened my resolve to help Elizabeth not feel hindered by her hearing impairment.

And on a lighter note...we are going to have large posters made up that say, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade".

In the end we are so blessed and so lucky and we know that. And as my brother said, "she doesn't realize that she has these issues". and if you look at her, it is true-- she is as happy as a lark. (knock on wood).

And on a yet lighter note...I think we are in for quite a ride when Elizabeth really gets going with her speech. Right now she has a large vocabulary of single words--although not too many that she puts together. And she is fascinated with a few words which she repeats quite often. One of those words is "animal".

So, today while we were in line at a local cafe, there was a VERY and I mean VERY large man in front of us. She decided she was going to practice her words and starting pointing at him yelling, "Animal, Animal.". Did I want to hide under a rock? Oh yeah. I simply said, "oh she calls everyone Animal". But that didn't seem to help the problem and only caused her to go into the mantra, "animal, animal, animal.'

"Kids say the darn'dst things"

And yes we are looking forward to all of those things.

Water Baby

Last week our next door neighbor Jane invited Elizabeth to her pool for a swim. Do you think she had a good time?

Little Miss Elizabeth

Here you see Elizabeth trying out for a role on "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous". I love the last photo of her on the phone--she loves telephones.

And she is figuring out that for the price of a $20.00 lunch you can hang out in the hotels and resorts that the movie stars do. I think you also learn this growing up in N.Y.C. When we were teenagers, my cousin and I used to scape money together and have dinner at the 21 Club! Hey, even a cat can look at a king!

Holly and Elizabeth

So it was about two weeks ago that Holly came down from LA to visit us and I am just now getting the photos posted. No surprise there.

As you can gather from the photos, Elizabeth was thrilled with the visit. And she was even more joyous when we managed to talk Holly into getting Bruce's okay to stay overnight with us. You should have seen Elizabeth's face when she woke in the morning to find Holly there!

You might know that Holly was my college roommate--and that was well over 20 years ago! How can that be possible? Can that be possible? Yes, I know--it is possible. Yikes.

And amazingly Holly and I can always pick up almost where we left off 20 years ago...and it seems Elizbeth feels the same way--she was ready to boot me out of the premises once Holly showed up--needless to say it was great to see her and we hope to see lots more of her--and the rest of the family--Zach and Becky and Bruce!

Elizabeth had a great Holly Day!

There's More to the Story...

I have long realized that my posts are just a peek into the Elizabeth's world and that a number of important facts are often left out--mostly owing to lack of time. I often walk around writing her blog in my head but getting the time to put fingers to keyboard is often scarce. In fact as you can see the date on this post is August 9th (which is the day I started it and now it is 6 days later).

Usually I get the most salient points of the day or the most amusing pictures up--but the "rest of the story" is usually left out.

So, let's see...how can I summarize this so as to fill you in and not bore you to tears? Well, here goes-

1. Sleep...well, we have made some progress. After 2 months of serious sleep issues and sleep deprivation on all of our parts, Elizabeth is sleeping in her own toddler bed for the entire night (knock on a lot of wood please). She is also going to sleep at nap time. She does, however wake at least once and maybe two or three times a night and we have to go and tell her to go back to sleep--which she usually does. She has a funny way of doing it and says in her own cute way that she will go back to bed for 5 minutes and then go downstairs. Once she is in her bed she is asleep for at least a few hours until her next call. Say prayers she keeps up a good sleep routine.





2. Elizabeth has been attending preschool at the JCC from 9:00 to 12:45 on Mon., Wed., and Fri. since June 20th--and she loves it so far. (knock on wood). She lucked out and landed in a class with ALL girls--there are 8 of them and they all get along wonderfully. It is adorable to watch. And it has me thinking that I may want to send her to an "All Girls" school when she gets older. Here are a couple of photos from her class-more to come:







3. She is a BIG girl. She seems to have gotten a couple of inches taller in the last couple of months and she is in the 95th percentile for height and the 90th percentile for age. We predict she will be quite tall.








4. She is pretty much (knock on wood) potty trained...at least during the day. She caught on really quick and we just had to work on some fine tuning. We are not 100% there but our diaper bills are now gone. I thought it would never happen and the whole idea of potty training seemed more daunting to me than preparing a doctoral thesis. But that is the way I feel about a lot of basic child rearing issues.

5. She is progressing great in almost every area but she seems to be a little slow in putting words together. She has a lot of single words but her expressive and receptive language skills are not where they should be so she has just qualified for speech therapy through the county. She will hopefully start next week and the therapist thinks she will catch up fast,. I hope she starts talking more soon as she often gets a little frustrated when she can't quite get her point across--besides that I would love to know what she is REALLY thinking. (Remind me that I said that).
Everyone asks me why is it that her speech is delayed and the best answer all my research has come up with is, "who knows?". There is conflicting literature about speech delays in internationally adopted children with some studies claiming that longer the time in an institutional setting and with a foreign language the greater the problem and then there are many studies that contradict that quite strongly.

I also gather that a lot of children born to English speaking parents have speech delays and that the reasons are often hard to pin down. In some cases it can be oral motor delays which have to do with difficulty forming words. And the experts seem to shrug their shoulders when you ask what causes this--but the therapist did say that she will have a better idea after a few weeks of therapy.

I have lots more to say and lots more photos to share but I better post this before another week goes by...

Water Baby

Elizabeth has a few favorite words and they are "ice pop" and "water". She loves ice pops and as you can see from the photos she loves playing with water, in water and around water.

Project Playhouse

On Saturday Elizabeth and I went off in search of some activity that would get her some much needed exercise. We decided to head to the Irvine Spectrum and check out Project Playhouse. We were happy when Patty and Maria (a.k.a.) Mei Mei, decided to join us. Saturday was the only day of the event that you could tour inside the children's playhouses that were being auctioned for charity so we figured it was a great day to go.


Now I have to qualify this when I say, "children's playhouses". These are the playhouses for kids with their own stock portfolios. In prior years some of these houses went for as much as $50,000. Yes, I did say 50 grand. It all does go to a good cause, however--HomeAid which provides shelter for people in need. You can check out the website and see some of the houses we saw that will be auctioned off in a few weeks. And if you have 50 grand burning a hole in your pocket, you may even want to place a bid. Let us know if you do and we will send Elizabeth over to play.

Here is the link:

http://www.projectplayhouse.org/home.php

Elizabeth and Maria




The girls had fun touring the open houses...




Here are Maria and Elizabeth checking out the digs. Maria seems to be wondering whether the granite is the right color for the flooring.




This was our favorite house..or shall I say, "my favorite house"...it was a beach cottage and I can tell you it is a tad bigger than some of my New York apartments.




She does seem right at home, doesn't she?




And what kid couldn't use a flat screen tv in her pad?




Check out the nice den in her house...




Enjoying a nice meal for herself in her new kitchen.