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
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