Introduction

Around September/October of last year, my child all but stopped speaking. It wasn't like she was a great orator before that or anything. Just a typical toddler saying a few favourite words with varying degrees of clarity and even making her first questions. At first, it was easy to put it down to her having 'off' days, but the longer she went without speaking and the more the quality of her words declined, the more worried my husband and I became.

She's always been a little different. She spent her first months of life screaming for 6-8 hours a day. We'd talk about things like the 'period of purple crying', gas, and the dreaded colic. We'd rock her for hours on end, sing, carry her round the house, play white noise sounds, and bounce her in her vibrating baby bouncer. We tried massage, soothing baths, and gripe water. Nothing worked. But every night at about 8 or 9, she'd simply just stop.

As she grew older she seemed to throw her entire focus into mobility and breaking down the various baby gates we erected to keep her safe. By the age of one, she was walking and already had two gates under her belt.

We'd feel pride as we watched her fantastic problem solving skills at work, feel delight when she smiled or laughed, and explain her increasingly weird ritualistic behaviours as being 'quirky'.

And she really is quirky.

One morning at around 18 months old, she woke up asking "What's this?" and "What's that?", using them correctly to boot. We made a game of telling her and her repeating it back.

But then her words suddenly dropped off and certain stimuli really began to bother her; the sound of toilets flushing in a public bathroom, the sensation of water on her skin. She would no longer play with us, but use us as accessories in her play, eye contact was sparse, and she had to arrange everything into a certain order that only she knew.

We made an appointment to see the Pediatrician, who after a twenty minute consult and attempting certain tests with our daughter, referred us Kennedy Krieger and a county support program.

Our daughter, or 'Pod' as I'll call her here, was assessed by the county and now has a Special Educator and Occupational Therapist that do in-home visits. These visits have been helpful, but at times the information and suggestions of things to work on can get a little overwhelming. This is the first reason I decided to start this blog; to have a place to collate the various activities and suggestions in a place so I can better organize working on these things.

The second reason is, as someone pointed out on my FaceBook the other day, there is a taboo around this topic, and that far too many people are embarrassed by their child's needs. Pardon my language, but fuck that. There is far too much evidence about the benefits of early intervention services for children with delays and/or sensory issues. The stakes are far too high to allow petty embarrassment to hold us back from getting that help for our children. And really, what on earth do we have to be embarrassed about? Our kids have other needs, so what? It doesn't mean they're somehow of less worth or are less worthy of our pride. Fair warning, but I firmly believe my daughter is going to be a fucking force of nature in this world and I want to help her get there. Not just because I believe in my daughter's potential, but because there is a time when they will have to live in the world without us, and so we have to be their best advocates now. It is my hope that my openness here will help others to also be open.

Lastly, my final reason for creating this blog is as a place to collate resources and stories for others who are going through the same thing, and so I'll be posting everything from articles to ideas for sensory play and speech development activities.

So there you have it, that's what this blog's about.