Is this a problem?

[arcara]

I have a 3-year-old girl, our 5th child, who has always been at the late end of acheiving developmental milestones. She had a tough end of pregnancy that I think has affected her, I'm just not sure how much.

 

I know nothing about different disablilities and this board has a lot of knowledge and experience, so I thought it might be good to ask about this here. The latest somewhat odd thing I've noticed about my dd is that she's 3-years-old and has said her own name only once in her life when I sat next to her and said, "Can you say Elena? El-en-a?". She then quickly repeated it. She will say the names of her siblings, but she NEVER says her own name. I know it sounds kind of silly to be worried about something so trivial, but this hasn't been our only flag that she's different than her siblings. If she has issues that need to be addressed, then we want to be able to help her.

 

So, does this sound like a sign of anything to you?

Thanks for listening (reading)!

[PeterPan]

Have you taken her to the ped? Ours (and in fact every practitioner I've taken my kids too, including speech therapists and OTs) screens for spectrum disorders and developmental issues. That would be an easy place to start. Does she have an age-typical amount of speech otherwise? Is she newly 3? My ds is 3, will be 4 in a couple weeks, and he does say his name, has for a number of months now. His name is hard to say, with letters he can't say. Actually, all 3 of his names (given, middle, last) have letters he can't say, making it just about unintelligible. It could just be somehting like that holding her back (just as a thought). Doesn't sound like that's what you're saying though. But with him that sense of self-identity came out really strong a few months ago, so maybe 3.5.

 

BTW, you can also call your county's Early Intervention office (might be called something else, but something in that vein) and talk it through with them. They should have a brochure they can send you, and they can send someone out to do a screening. Once you know precisely where she's behind, you can determine if you want to pursue interventions. I'm all for interventions, because they've made a HUGE difference for my ds. You really just have to take the first step and ask for that eval. The ped can help or EI. Then you can decide what to do with that info and whether you want to pursue something privately or through the EI/ps services.

[arcara]

Thank you for the reply.

 

She's 3.5yo - April birthday. The rest of her speech is ok. She's made big improvements in this area over the past few months. She recently started referring to herself as "I" instead of "me" all the time. Almost until her third birthday she only said the first syllable of words, but now she says more than one. She's just very impulsive and sometimes kind of out-of-control in her behavior. And all of my other kids learned their letters and numbers on their own by the age of two and at 3.5 she still can't recognize the letter A. I don't care about academics at this age, but if that's a sign of a bigger problem, then that's important to me.

 

I guess I should have her evaluated by someone. I don't want to create a problem where there isn't one either. I know that some kids are more active than others and some are late bloomers academically, so she may be fine. I also hate labeling kids, especially at such a young age. But, like you said, early intervention can make a big difference.