Testing Update

Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2009 8:16 AM
Subject: UPDATE: Special KMail

We are so grateful for your prayers this week as we have been walking through the process of testing Zachariah to determine the cause of his language delay (and, ultimately, to determine how we can best help him to catch up).

CBK's interview with the tester, CL, on Tuesday went well. They were able to finish early, even, primarily due to the fact that Zachariah does not exhibit many of the potential behaviors associated with language delay. Consequently, CL was able to flip past several pages of the interview booklet from which she was working.

On Thursday, CL spent a little under two hours with Zachariah testing such things as his ability to follow verbal and facial clues (without gesturing). She thought he was adorable (of course!) and saw his reasoning abilities at work as he figured out how this toy or that one worked. CL was also able to see, though, that Zachariah rarely uses more than one word at a time, which is our biggest concern.

At the end of the session, she asked to set up another time to work/play with Zachariah to further her assessment, so we will be meeting with CL again when we return from our trip to see family. She has reserved the room for two one-and-a-half-hour sessions on the 29th of May, although she may or may not need that entire time.

A funny "out-take" from the session: due to having a mommy who is less than enthusiastic about play options that lead to potential messes, Zachariah has not had a lot of experience with Play-doh. Consequently, when Miss CL put a white piece of stuff on a plate in front of him and told him it was "cake," he took a bite of it. Mommy explained to Miss CL that that was due to inexperience with Play-doh, not lack of imagination. :-P

We appreciate your continued prayers as we press further into the process of determining how best to help Zachariah to learn to communicate. Today was a particularly hard day in which there were many times we had no idea what his desires were, and he was obviously frustrated by that, as were we. Thank you for praying towards healing in this area. Specifically, we are asking that "Zachariah's mind would be renewed."