The information given me by various professionals who have repeatedly evaluated my daughter is the biggest issue that I face in my life. In order for me to resolve my issue I need to explore whether my issue lies with the professionals and the process of evaluation, or with me not wanting to accept that my child is disabled.

My six and a half year old daughter, Malia, began to show signs of delayed development at age eighteen months. Her speech started to regress and there were also behavioral signs that were significant enough for me to ask our doctor for advice. When was not concerned to the point that I was I contacted Multnomah County Developmental Disability department and requested that they evaluate Malia. They agreed that that were delays, and made a referral to Portland Public Schools Early Intervention Program for special services such

as speech therapy, occupational therapy, and other early learning resources for children with disabilities. I also switched Malia to a pediatrician who immediately referred her for a full-scale evaluation at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) where they have an evaluation clinic for children with disabilities. At this point

stressful for families. In my case, when I understood what they were telling me, I began grieving for her future and all of my dreams I had for her that would never be met. I became unavailable as a parent, and I lowered my expectations for her. This was counter productive, and could have been avoided. Offering no support nor follow-up to families to learn how to cope with the label causes much unnecessary pain and grief.

The APC elicited a more thorough response from me than the PMI because it required that I spend more time on it. I came up with some of the same ideas as with the PMI exercise and a few other ideas as well. One item on my APC list was having the examiners pay more attention to the child's teacher and parent comments when diagnosing a child. This would help the examiners have a more complete understanding of the child. Another idea that I listed was to have the professional spend more time exploring the child's strengths and

-examiners could pay more attention to parent and teacher comments/concerns

Interesting- would be interesting to test a subject over a thirty day (outpatient) time period, to develop a panel of parents who have been through the process to give feedback and to encourage improvement in examiners' delivery of the diagnosis

possibilities in order to aid in designing a special program in which the child would thrive.

Malia was two and a half years old and this is where I began to take issue with the evaluation process.

-implement a parent support network for families receiving a diagnosis, match families based on similar diagnosis, train parents primarily focus on a parent receiving first-time diagnosis

Some topics in this essay:
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