Daughter Vail Reflection

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Today, I spent the afternoon shadowing the Ellison family and their four year old daughter Avery. The Ellison family had traveled for an hour and a half from the Marshalltown region of Iowa to reach the CDD today. This was Avery’s first visit to the CDD and she was scheduled to see audiology, speech therapy, and to have an autism screening. Overall, Avery is a very energetic and happy four year old girl. Avery’s parents seemed very accepting of Avery’s current speech development delays, but are very concerned with the potential diagnosis of autism and this is only coupled by the unfamiliarity of the CDD and the Iowa City area. The afternoon started with a visit to audiology. Avery was exposed to a basic hearing screening that conditioned the child to put toys in a bucket every time they heard a series of beeps. The audiologist created a very friendly and non-threatening environment that made this test run smoothly. Avery’s parents were also at ease during this time, as they expressed they had no concerns about Avery’s hearing from their day-to-day experiences. Avery showed the normal range of hearing for a child in her age ranges and she was rewarded with a sticker for her hard work. The family and I were then escorted to the 2nd floor to wait for their visit with the developmental pediatrician. Overall, the audiology visit was the best visit that Avery had all day. The family and I then waited for about 30 minutes before we were able to see the developmental pediatrician. We were able to pass the time by watching a unique pinball machine that shot balls across different ramps and chimes. I was also able to get to know the Ellison’s more. Mr. Ellison works at a small appliance repair business with the hopes of owning the business in the next year. Mrs. Ellison is a stay at home mom, who was originally from England. Avery was the oldest of three children and had spent a lot of time in ABA speech therapy since the age of 2. I also found out that Avery loves to do crafts and color. We were then escorted to a small examining room and proceeded to wait for the developmental pediatrician for about 10 minutes. During this time, I found that Avery has a new found interest with Garfield, which I could easily relate to my own childhood, and made for a fun conversation. …show more content…
Once the physician entered the room there was a definite change in tone of the interaction. The physician was extremely friendly and personable, but I believe the thought that in the next few minutes Avery could be diagnosed with autism weighed heavily on the Ellison’s. Throughout the conversation the physician gently prodded about Avery’s behaviors and Avery’s parents thought carefully about each of their responses. It presented an interesting dichotomy of wanting to be honest, but not wanting to feel like that we are talking as if our child has a problem. Interestingly enough, Avery spent the majority of this time coloring and exploring her surroundings. After a brief physical examination, the physician decided that Avery was not on the autism spectrum, but instead would be diagnosed with a speech development disorder. This came as sort of a relief to the Ellison family, as they have been addressing Avery’s speech development already for the last couple of years and this diagnosis could provide more resources to help her. We were escorted back to the waiting room and then asked when the next appointment, with the speech therapist, would be. To their surprise they were able to move up on the schedule and see the speech therapist right away. We were told to go to the 3rd floor waiting room where we would be met by the speech therapist. On the third floor, we were met by the speech therapist and guided back to a small office. The speech therapist started off by collecting information about what things Avery had been doing in her AEA and school speech therapy sessions. The speech therapist then started doing tests to identify Avery’s baseline skills. These tests consisted of identifying images based on verbal clues, continually

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