We had our second visit from Portage today. This is an organisation that helps disabled and learning impaired children under the age of 3.
We had about 45 minutes of intensive learning-helping play with Emily where she had to choose, take turns and do other developmentally helpful activities.
Sue and I then listened to Sheila (from Portage) give us more information about services and help available to ensure that we do everything we can for Emily to get her over the current development issues she has.
There are schools we can sign up to (Dragonflies), government grants we can apply for to help with the cost of her private speech therapy and all sorts of other things.
As the icing on the cake, Sheila also left some of the toys she used with Emily so Sue and I can use them to coax her out of her shell.
We also have to enact "special time" which is where we let Emily play with a bunch of toys and mimic her while doing a football-style commentary ("Emily is hugging her bear.") I'm going to try and do this every night when we get home and see where this gets us.
I'm glad we're getting this help ... finally. Of all the people we've seen so far, the help and advice from Portage has been 100% invaluable. By far the best resource we've dealt with yet.
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