You never dream your child will struggle. When they place that sweet bundle of joy in your arms you immediately have big dreams and plans for them...you never imagine that life and learning will be a struggle...that they will struggle socially and be delayed behind their peers...this was now our reality...
The evaluations were done by Alabama Early Intervention and we were told our sweet 2 year old had extreme developmental delays, and sensory integration issues. He was delayed in the areas of speech/communication, fine motor and cognitive. At 2 years old, he tested with almost a year delay. Where do we go from here? Thankfully, God placed the right people in our life at the right time (because He's just pretty awesome like that). Alabama Early Intervention (which is a FREE service to any family in Alabama that suspects a delay in their child under the age of 3) was amazing to work with! All of the evaluations are done at your home! They meet you where you are and make it absolutely easy on each family! Our case manager was so supportive and helped us come up with a reasonable plan and goals to start pushing Brock Allen to catch up to his peers. Since one of his biggest areas of delay was communication and langauge, we really focused on speech therapy. We were blessed with an incredible speech therapist that came to our house twice a week and did one on one therapy sessions with Brock Allen. When I tell you that God worked out the details, he truly did. Everyone that was placed in our path encouraged us, cried with us, and held our hand. They loved Brock Allen and wanted the best for him. It's a scary place to be when you open your home to people you don't know and hope that they can help your son at the same time. It's a whole new level of vulnerability and humbleness. They saw us at our worst some days, including a messy house and dishes in the sink.
As therapy progressed, we saw our son start to grasp things he hadn't before. He started communicating a little better, instead of screaming for his milk, he began to try to say "cup." He started sitting and attempting to follow one to two step directions. We began to see God grow his intellect. Brock Allen was making progress, but still had a ways to go. He still struggled with any social setting, loud noises, birthday parties, separation anxiety, and appropriate interactions with other children, just to name a few.
We continued to trust God, pray over our child, and we trusted that God had a plan for him....a big plan. Instead of feeling discouraged, we began to claim this time as part of the awesome testimony that God was building in him and our family.
