I have only known Dr Elijah and her team for 5/6 months but within this time frame their hard work, dedication, efforts and huge support have significantly changed our lives. We have moved from uncertainty and not knowing which direction to turn to having direction, goals and milestones to reach to help our son on his road of development.
Our son has developed normally reaching all his milestones but not long before he was two I started getting concerned about his speech and hearing. He started to display some traits and characteristics that were also concerning but my prime concern was his speech. Other people like to tell you that all children have ‘odd’ behaviours, that children go through ‘phases’ and that they all develop in different ways and in their own time. So not to worry. But I did.
We took him to have a hearing test and it went well. We took him to see an ENT specialist and they said he didn’t have glue ear. Even though these results were good, he was still not responding and engaging when we spoke to him. Nursery suggested we go to the doctor and we were offered a paediatrician on the nhs. . She said he was only 2years 5months so too young to diagnose and to come back in 6 months. In the meantime she offered me speech therapy which we received 7 months later. We had our own private speech therapist too. She definitely started our son to engage more and develop eye contact but progress was slow and nothing really seemed to happen. We met Dr Elijah a couple of months after the paediatrician visit.
Since meeting Dr Elijah my eyes have been opened and I now know where our son had/has delays in his development and what we can actually do to help him. Dr Elijah took us back to basics in terms of what we should be expecting at each stage of development and gave us activities to do each week in order to hit those development milestones. After a couple of months of 2 weekly sessions we then began at The Centre. The Centre reinforces the 1-2-1 activities but in a simulated nursery environment. Our son loves it there. It seems to bring out the best in him. It is intense, focused and constant work consisting of 1-2-1 activities, reading, OT, speech therapy and so on. All the key skills needed to help develop the children and allow them to function well in a normal nursery school environment. They work very hard there but it gives the children a huge sense of achievement and fulfilment once they have accomplished their tasks.
If my son is happy there, I am happy for him to be there. They work very hard for him at the centre and as a parent I work consistently hard with him at home to help him reach his set targets. The homework and activities at home are as important as the work in the centre. The more work we put into the activities, hopefully the more results we see. It is never an easy journey. Each piece of work can be a challenge and an emotional rollercoaster when he doesn’t want to do it but Dr Elijah likes to tell me ‘you must’, so I do.
I cannot praise Dr Elijah and her team enough for the commitment to the work they do and for driving each child forward to reaching their full potential.
