Zoe's evaluation at the Early Childhood Center

Mike and I have read a few articles recently about children with Russell-Silver Syndrome having developmental delays. We mentioned this to Zoe's pediatrician during her annual check-up in May and mentioned that we would like to have Zoe evaluated by the ECI (Early Childhood Intervention).

Remember when Zoe was evaluated by the ECI when we lived in Charlotte, NC?

Well, it turns out that the ECI only evaluates kids up to 3 years old. After that, they are evaluated by the school system. Well, lucky us, we happen to live really close to this brand new school building that is called the Early Childhood Center for McKinney School District. That's exactly who we needed.

So I gave them a call, explained Zoe's syndrome and why we wanted her to be evaluated, they sent me lots of paperwork to fill out, and then Zoe was evaluated.

Now, going into this, Mike and I really didn't think that Zoe was behind in anything. We've been working with her on a lot of educational type of stuff (ABC's, numbers, writing, reading, etc.). Our goal is to keep her on par (or maybe a little ahead of the curve) so that if she does have learning challenges down the road then she won't fall too far behind. Having said this, we wanted to get her evaluated early and annually (based on recommendations by Zoe's doctors).

So, evaluation day (July 27th). The first thing the social worker, Laurie, said to me was that after looking through the paperwork they could already tell that Zoe wasn't going to need any therapy. But because the doctor ordered the evaluation they wanted to go ahead with it. Okay, that's a good start.

So Lauri took Zoe and me into a room and tried playing with Zoe a bit. But Zoe would have NOTHING to do with Laurie. She was totally ignoring her and being SO shy. So Laurie sent Zoe and me into another room by ourselves to play. It was one of those rooms with a one-sided mirror and hidden microphones. And LOTS of toys. They wanted to be able to watch and hear Zoe play without her worrying about them. So after playing in there for about 10 minutes Laurie came back in and said she was so impressed at what Zoe knows and what she can do. By this time Zoe was talking to Laurie. :) So Laurie quizzed her on a few more things and then we were done. It was all really quick and painless.

The best thing is that Zoe passed with flying colors. Yay! Even though that is what we expected to happen, it was still a huge relief.

So, we'll take Zoe back in one year to be evaluated again. Then after that she'll be in school and won't need to be evaluated any more.