Language update for Sydney

Sydney has been in speech and occupational therapy for almost 6 months now, so it is time for re-evaluations.  Yesterday her speech therapist started a new evaluation and Sydney came out strong at 12-18 months with her language (she is 26 months old).  At her initial eval, she was solid at 6 months so that is a decent gain. 

She does have some weird holes in her language gains, though.  She can identify all the letters of the alphabet, count to 13, knows her shapes and many of her colors.  But she doesn't use any names yet (no "mama" or "daddy").  She will sing along with you and loves songs, but if you are trying to get her to say a word, she gets REALLY angry and will hit, tantrum, and run away.  Her joint attention, especially with me, is very good, though.  She doesn't always make eye contact...she has to feel like it...and she does not attend to her environment very well.  She won't pay attention to a conversation going on around her, and she often ignores you when you call her name or ask her to do something (a command which she does understand).  So we do have a few concerns about "the spectrum" and I think I am going to request another developmental evaluation for her.  I am pretty certain she doesn't have autism, but the spectrum is wide and it is possible she will have some things to work on.  Also, some siblings of kids with autism have a few of the traits without anything which can be diagnosed.

Now for the positive.  She has started copying much of what we say over the past week.  She used to just label one word items, and now she'll copy whole phrases that she hears.  She doesn't seem to understand most of them, but at least she is starting to SAY them.  We have been working on putting two words together and she is more willing to copy them or sometimes to say them on her own.  She is ACTIVELY refusing to say "want" which is driving us a little nuts! 

She is starting to fill in some names now that we've been actively working on it.  She tends to want to call everyone Jacob, but yesterday she began to copy me if I filled in the correct name (before that, she just got angry with me!).  We're looking at a lot of family photos and filling in names.  I love how she says Natalie right now  - "yad-yee"