Apraxia... again

Sweets had another speech eval today. She will be 3 in April, so we are getting an independent eval in preparation for the IEP referral.

Today's eval said she would diagnose Sweets with apraxia. On the intake history, I had written down that she's been tested for this, that, and the other (including apraxia) and they have all been ruled out. So at the end, when she said she would call it apraxia, I was surprised. I thought we had already pretty much ruled that out last year!

The CDSA eval had said that there are some features consistent with apraxia, but others that were not, but the Duke eval had said that she did NOT think that Sweets had apraxia.

This eval said she would recommend a therapist trained in PROMPT therapy, which I'm sure my current therapist is not since she's in her training year. We are getting ready for transition to IEP, and I am not sure if/what she will qualify for under the school system because I know it is harder to qualify for that than it is for the early intervention that she's in now. And I don't know if the school can provide a PROMPT trained therapist either.

I have some concern that the evaluator was biased to apraxia and PROMPT because there are very few therapists around who are trained in PROMPT, and she is one of them. Not to say that she's necessarily trying to drum up business, just that she may have bias towards what she works on a lot.

The scores from today's eval were 21 months in receptive and 23 months in expressive, so that puts her right on the border of the 30% delay that is required to qualify. She is 32.5 months.

We are going to get a 2nd opinion on apraxia at Duke in Feb, and the school system will do their own eval for the IEP too, so we will have a few opinions to go on.