When I first saw Peta she looked really sad. She’d been in a language development centre for 2 years but was not making much progress at all. Her future in the mainstream school was looking pretty bleak. Mother was really anxious about her and I could see that Peta was starting to show her distress by not cooperating. She was only 7 years old – in an age group where behaviour is generally well settled and usually compliant.
This is what her initial assessment chart looked like. You should note that there are some functions that are so weak that they were rated as ‘problem’ meaning we could not get enough assessment data to rate them fairly.
Peta was immediately enrolled in the Symbolic Thinking exercise. After 5 months of intensive work there were tears all around because this is what her chart looked like. Only Symbolic Thinking was reassessed.
Peta’s capacity to think in language was now above average for her age. Mum told me a very amusing story about how this affected her life. They were in the car listening to a country music song where things were going badly. A little voice popped up from the back seat to say ‘gee, I hope life doesn’t get any worse for them’.
Peta is now happily engaged in school, making progress and working on Symbol Relations. She is much easier to work with as she is understanding what we are saying to her. She can prioritise, plan and stick to a plan she has made. She is much more relaxed and becoming quite confident. She can also tell some very amusing jokes. What a turnaround. For everyone.
