Expressive Language disorder, Apraxia and PPD-NOS and so much more....

We knew from an early age that Ella was going to be behind in many areas.  Speech was a huge area for her that required much attention.  She was diagnosed with severe expressive language disorder and apraxia.

Aprax-a-what??

Apraxia was described to me as this....its like a drummer who is messing around on the drums.  When he plays something he really likes he goes back and tries to duplicate it...but cannot!  This is how apraxia is for Ella.  She can sometimes pop off with a word here and there but when she tries to duplicate that word she struggles.  hard core!

Fast forward to Summer of 2012.  I was working in a camp for children who are high functioning on the autism spectrum.  I grew to realize that Ella was a lot like the other kids.  Ella would line toys up, freak if you disturbed her lines, hated not being a routine...etc.  I decided to have her tested to see if she was on the spectrum as well.  Her ADOS testing came back borderline.  The testing was also done at 8am.  Because I was working the camp I talked to the director of the program and he suggested having her seen by a specific psychologist at the Achievement Center.  When we saw this woman it was in the evening and Ella showed a lot more 'autistic tendencies' that we see her do at home.  She was color coordinating things, lining things up, becoming agitated if the routine was disrupted.  She gave her a diagnosis of PDD-NOS - provisional.  Meaning she would have the diagnosis but she wanted to see 6 months of data to support the PDD then she would take the provisional off.  The problem with this is the insurance wouldn't approve a BSC to get the data with the provisional on and the psychologist wouldn't take the provisional off without the data.

It was then that we sought out another psychologist who did more testing on her and determined that she did in fact have PDD-NOS and even gave her the diagnosis without the provisional on it to ensure that she gets the help that she needed.  At that time her BSC noticed that Ella wasn't even trying to say words even if we knew she COULD say them.  A lot of this was self conscious issue.  In the last year Ella has went from saying nothing to saying many things and even saying short phrases such as yesterday when she said 'whoa mama big!" referring to the snow mounds outside of her prek.



This basically concludes the 'background' information on Ella to get you caught up on her history.  This is just an overview.  I am sure there are other things that have gone one medically that have slipped my mind but these are the basics....if you have any questions feel free to ask :)