After all the pushing and prodding, we finally had the appointment with the speech analyst (not her real title, but I can't remember what it actually was) today. It took about an hour for her to do a snapshot assessment, but it was mostly positive.
It looks like Emily's OK, but just slightly behind in development. There's nothing we could have done or didn't do to help it, some kids are just like this. Sue and I were told that a lot of the stuff we're doing is on the right path - giving her a choice, narrating daily activities, etc. I put a lot of this down to previous help from family members and the Hanen book we've been reading (which we were told today was a great tool to be using).
We've got a course of "home treatment" to try for a month - which is basically doing what we've been doing, but with a couple of sheets of further guidelines. We're going to get reassessed in early November.
We were also told of the knock on effects of speech delay - from adult-child interaction, to playing, etc. and how a lot of this could be construed as other ailments including autism.
I knew today wouldn't be a silver bullet remedy, but I'm glad it wasn't doom and/or gloom as well. There's nothing "wrong" with Emily, we just to ensure we give her every assistance to get her back up to speed.
