Sprout has always been behind on her social milestones, but never enough to hit any of the big red flags. She just decided to do things on the tail end of normal. Last fall, we decided to have her evaluated by a psychologist and speech-language therapist just to make sure there wasn't something we were missing. Her articulation is darn near perfect, but she had a lot of trouble interacting with other people. She also never asked questions or engaged in back and forth conversation unless it adhered to a script that she had memorized. Books, Super Why! and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood are the most common sources of her scripts.
So the first round of evaluations showed a social delay, but nothing that required immediate intervention. The general consensus was to wait six months and see what happened. So, we waited six months. She's made huge progress, but still lags behind socially. She's trying to interact but just doesn't know how. Then, DH came across literature about hyperlexia. Hyperlexia, at is simplest, is precocious, self-taught, early reading.
Have I mentioned that Sprout can read? I mean she can read anything. She reads signs everywhere we go, pulls books of friends' shelves and reads the titles and opens to random pages in novels and can read them. She floored my brother-in-law when she read a sign at the zoo. It said, "Komodo Dragon Exhibit." I know people don't believe it. I mean, I don't believe it half the time, but she can read anything you give her. She doesn't comprehend at nearly the same level as she can read, but she does comprehend a lot, especially things that are age-appropriate.
So, anyway, Hyperlexia is often paired with some social and language development difficulties, so we decided to consult another Speech Language Pathologist. Our experience with her has been amazing! We had a long conversation about our concerns and her possible hyperlexia (it's not an official "diagnosis" just a self-identified trait at this point). She works with another student at Sprout's preschool, so she went there and observed her and interacted with her in the classroom. She pulled her out and evaluated her individually. She came up with a detailed report and we met and talked about it. After all that time watching and interacting with Sophia, she completely saw what we were concerned about. She also fell in love with Sprout and Sprout fell in love with her. We decided to start therapy once a week. During school, she had her therapy at school and had part of the time in the classroom to work on those social interactions. At home, a lot involves her coming to tell me things or have conversations with me. It's so amazing to see the amount of thought and preparation the therapist puts into her sessions with Sprout. And how she really uses her amazing ability to read to help her learn how to speak and interact. I'm so happy we found her!
In the process of her evaluation, she noticed that her language skills were profoundly different in the classroom setting versus one-on-one and even noted when she came to our home that the appropriateness of her interactions were on an even higher level (eye contact, initiating conversation, etc.). She suggested we get Sprout evaluated further to make sure she didn't have some kind of auditory processing disorder because she is extremely sensitive to sound and has so much more trouble functioning in the classroom or group settings. It may just be the social/language delay, but we want to make sure that there isn't more going on.
So we sent in all the referral paperwork for a clinic at a university about an hour and a half away to have her evaluated. They will look over what we've done so far and determine whether they would like to see her. It would be interesting to see what they came up with, for sure. In the meantime, we ask ourselves, "Should we be proud or afraid that the SLP finds our daughter fascinating?"
She is truly amazing. There is no question about that. I don't really want to find something "wrong." I believe that all of this is a side affect of some kind of gifted-ness, but we also don't want to ignore things that may cause her trouble in the future. Hopefully, we'll get a better idea of how she thinks and how to help her be her best self.
