should i be feeling so disheartend about "development delay"

[kickassmomma]

my daughter is 2 and a half, she already has medical problems in terms of a respiratory condition. however, she was born full term, perfectly 'healthy' although she was born with this condition, which is genetic and affects a variety of areas including temperature, sensitivity to pain etc.

however, since my daughter was 9 months i have noticed she is a little behind with a few areas. she hit a few milestones late. i thought nothing of it her dad was the same . then her consultant made a comment that she seems 'too healthy' to say what she has been through and what condition she has. i also brushed that comment off.

when she was 10 months she was diagnosed secondary lactose intolerance which lasted almost a year. she also has an allergy to most creams. from this i was told that she is classed as an 'allergic baby' and id have to be careful and not to give her things with nuts in etc because shes high risk to develop an allergy.

now to the development bit (apologies for the long post already) over the past few months as i have been hinting to the health professionals that deal with her, that i feel her development is somewhat behind, not only to people around me that have children the same age but from expereince in working in a nursery. i have always gotten the same reply.

" you'd expect her to be behind though"

i could scream at people who tell me that! NO! i dont expect it and nor should you!!! her medical problems are in no way linked intellectually. the latest person to say this is her speech therapist (who we see for eating and drinking) i explained that i though she would been talking more although she has a vast amountof words. she agreed however said it wasnt too bad and she'd review in 6 weeks she said

"she is slightly behind but id expect that!!" i do feel somewhat like they expect this of her and instead of implimenting things to stop this from happening they are waiting until it is bad enough to do something about.

i am to question her doctor tomorrow if he feels the same way and if his answer is yes i really think we should do something about it, am i being unreasonable to ask that of them?? her only major draw back atm is that she cannot climb stairs/steps we have just learnt her to walk down with alot of support from us but she cannot get up excluding crawling up (which takes ages) should i be pushing for therapies to begin sooner rather than later??

Definatly ask the doctor, you have put it very coherently here, her genetic/allergy problems should not affect her development, so is the delay a worry, or is she just toward the back of "normal"-

My DD seems to be last to do everything, late to walk, late to talk, late out of nappies during the day. I can't tell you the relief I felt when I found out recently that the first born of the NCT group of babies we were part of was still in an overnight nappy as my DD has just stopped wearing them! Yay! Not last! Second to last, but not last!

However, although she's late with it all, she's still within "normal". Would you feel reassured if the doctor was able to tell you the same?

did she have a check up with HV at 27 months? that is design to assess her development to date and would have given you some ideas about where she "should" be.

if she missed it I'd say she need a proper check up.

and yes, push for whatever yo think she might needs to "catch her up", don't wait for them to offer it, you know her best if she needs therapy or physio or whatever make it happen!

why wait? my boys all could climb up the stairs by the time they were 1.5 and at the same time were taught to get done on their bottoms.

I still have to remind my 2.5 y o son to hold on to the banister, but he goes up & down as he pleases

the only thing I'd say re "expect her to be behind" is that sometimes being slower in one area might possibly slow them down elsewhere.
and of course the opposite can be true, if slow in one respect they might soar in another.

either way I'd be annoyed too

whether they expect her to be behind or not - if she has delays and difficulties in certain areas she needs support for it! if their comment is in the attitude of "to be expected so we will ignore" then no, that is not good enough and you will need to keep on at them until they sort her some more support