first appt at Child Development Centre - wondering what to do/say/take

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Hi

We have an appointment at Child Development Centre next week for DS (nearly 6). OT has referred him due to concerns about his fine motor skills and general co-ordination. She has also identified a number of sensory processing issues. We have concerns re behaviour and social skills. School have concerns re attention span and ability to concentrate/focus.

As far as I know we have an appointment with the paed but the slot is for an hour so I assume other stuff will be done as well. Can anyone share any experiences of this type of appointment? I'm wondering whether to take a lot of written information about our concerns or whether she will think I'm mad.

What info are they likely to want re developmental milestones? To complicate matters DS is adopted so I will have to second-guess what they may want and look it up beforehand :)

Thanks in advance!

I'd take everything in a written list, even if you end up just reading it to them, but preferably give them a copy. I have learnt this from experience, I always forget a few important things and tend to get a bit teary and emotional so making sure I don't forget things is important. Have any questions you want answers to written down, too. Ie, where do we go from here? Will there be any support available, occupational therapy, SALT.

Do you know if any relevant genetic history? Any quirky relatives etc, or is that info going to be difficult to come by? If you have any red book milestones they will be useful, physical development - crawling, walking etc, speech - babbling, communication - pointing, shared attention etc. Otherwise, development from when you had him. Good luck.

Agree with Ellen definitely write it down- it helps to make sure you don't go off at a tangent (like I tend to do) and stick to the actually important bits of information. It also helps to re-read it yourself and edit the details to make the issues clearer.
The pead only asked ds his name and how old he was, other than that it was just what i told him. I don't know if it's the same everywhere but our pead expected us to talk about ds' (also nearly 6) difficulties in front of him. I wasn't comfortable doing that so dh took him outside while I talked at to the pead. You might want to consider taking a friend or relative with you in case you're in that situation.

Thank you very much!

I am preparing something written and dh is coming along partly because he wants to and partly for exactly the reason you mention. I wouldn't be very comfortable talking about ds over his head anyway and with him being adopted, there is a good deal that the paed may want to know about early history that DS doesn't yet know or need to know.

Many thanks both.

Yes, def., def., def., write it down, and, as much as you can quantify things.
Words like 'somtimes' or 'for quite a while' or 'occasionally' mean such different things to different people.

If you don't write it down, I'll guarentee you'll come away and say "I wish I'd mentioned....". An hour is actually a very short time to sum up your child's life, especially when they are in the room with you and you are getting distracted. (IME, the appts are usually 45mins here, leaving a few mins between appts which are then on the hour)

They do usually take pregnancy and birth history and then developmental milestones (when sat up / crawled / walked / toilet trained etc) - so that will obviously be a bit different for you.

Ask the class teacher / SENCo if they would put their concerns in writing. It really helps to build up as complete a picture of the child as possible. Some bullet points would do it, it doesn't need to be an essay. The Paed would generally write to the school afterwards, but if they haave the info in advance, it just helps with the whole picture earlier on in the process.