Thu 18/2/2010

Yesterday was the big day..the visit to the Child Development Team at Puketiro.
It is in that block of land that Keneperu is in, and the buildings and environment it smacks of the 60's or 70's and has a slightly dilapidated, somewhat abandoned feel.
So we got there at 9:30 and went in. There is a big reception area packed with big toys so James immediately started playing. The specialists came along, there was Andrew the Paediatrician, Vincent the child Psychologist and Kylie(?) the speech language therapist. They went into a room and I went to take James in, but he didn't want to go into the room he headed for the door out of reception back to the outside outside. His wobbly lasted all of about 4 seconds then he came along OK, as soon as we got in the room he saw all the toys and put a big grin on. The three specialists were in three chairs facing us where two chairs were placed. James then did a most curious thing, he went up to each of the three people and stood in front of each of them and did the biggest smile at each one. He even touched the Paediatricians leg. Talk about turn on the charm! He then went off to play. To cut a long story short, the specialists then proceeded to ask us questions for the next two hours about James and would often come back to points or drill into specific things. While they did this they wrote notes. For a fair bit of the time there would be two of them questioning us while either the speech language person (initially) or the Paediatrician would sit and play with James and interact with him, do tests and takes notes. The speech language person spent quite a bit of time playing with him and listening to his babble and talking with him.
I noticed the Paediatrician had a pre-printed sheet with boxes and things on it, some had ticks next to them, some had crosses. Some of the things he tried to get James to do was throw a ball into a box (which he did eventually after showing James what to do, get him to hand objects to the specialist from assorted objects mixed together (spoons, toy animals, etc) which he didn't do. got him to walk up some steps, tried to get him to jump off them.
Other things I remember, the Psychologist was particularly interested in the regression that James had where his language skills went backwards when we went over to Melbourne. They covered pretty much every question I think they could ask about. His behaviours, interactions, habits, things he liked to do, things he didn't, his eating habits, sleeping. The paediatrician checked his heart, ears, eyes, throat, weight, height, head size, testicles, reflexes (knee test).
At the end they had a conference for 5 minutes and got us to wait.
They then brought us in and said first off that he was 'a lovely boy'!, they then said they wanted to see him at little school so we arranged that. That is next Thursday and we have an appointment with them at 11:30 after they have been there where they will give us his diagnosis.
By the time we got out of there it was about 11:40am. We felt like they had been very thorough, and in fact I was tired from so much talking!