Two years ago, when a speech therapist from Oak-Leyden Developmental Services dropped by to check in with Liz Johnson’s young daughter, she noticed Daniel, and requested to take a closer look. The 6-month-old baby brother’s neck looked a little crooked, but with physical therapy, she speculated, he could improve.
The family knew Daniel had torticollis, meaning that a muscle on one side of his neck was shorter than the other. But when Johnson was told that her son could develop a speech delay because of low muscle tone, she agreed to the agency’s early-intervention services.
The unexpected in-home evaluation that day evolved into 18 months of weekly physical therapy sessions, and now at 2½, Daniel is progressing just about as he should be.
“During that time, our therapist gave me a lot of ideas on how to strengthen Daniel’s skills at home,” says the Oak Park mom. “They also check in with us every six months. It’s nice to know that someone else is keeping on top of his developmental milestones, and he is in the normal range now.”
Because Oak-Leyden is encountering more developmentally savvy parents, Chelsea Guillen, Early Intervention Division chief, says the agency has started to offer early-age developmental screenings-the first step to understanding what is and isn’t happening for a child.
“For children with minor speech delays, for example, many of them just need some help figuring out how to use their lips, tongue and teeth in order to make those sounds,” Guillen says.
The first step
River Forest resident Kim Meyer says that when she adopted her 9-month-old daughter Melinda, she was developing extraordinarily, but she was slow to speak. It was her early-intervention sessions of speech therapy at Oak-Leyden that gave Melinda her sea legs, says Meyer. Now that she’s pushed past age 2, everything is going swimmingly, and the active toddler is ready for her next developmental steps.
“They have helped her interact with other kids, and now she walks into the facility like she’s mayor,” Meyer says. “She’s gotten what she needed and we’ll go forward. I think I will always be somewhat involved with Oak-Leyden because of the music classes. It seems that they are not just for kids with developmental disabilities.”
Guillen says hesitant parents need to understand that they don’t have to wait for a diagnosis or doctor’s recommendation to start their child with early-intervention services. She also urges families to understand the ranges of a child’s development. Having a child who is significantly lagging in one or more areas undergo a preliminary developmental screening could help prevent a more serious problem, she says.
“My philosophy is better safe than sorry,” Guillen says. “I would rather comfort a parent and tell them that everything is going fine, don’t worry, rather than miss a child who could have been helped.”
-Deb Quantock McCarey