Nueropsychologist

Because Catherine received chemotherapy at such a young age and is now in school, the oncologist has directed us to meet with a neuropsychologist every three months. These meetings are good and bad for me. So far the sessions have been reassuring, but it does cause me to fret over every detail.

At the last appointment we talked about 3 issues: non-responsiveness, letter mix-ups, and phonics.

Catherine occasionally (maybe every few days) will answer our questions with completely non-responsive answers. For example, I asked her what she does in computer class at school. She said “Remember the eggs that became the caterpillar and then the butterfly?”

I was completely taken aback. In court hearings when witnesses respond with non-responsive answers, the judge will order the witness to undergo a mental health evaluation and a drug screen. Being unable to focus enough to answer the question that was asked is a bad sign, in my professional experience. So, this has naturally caused me great concern.

The doctor said that many toddlers have difficulty focusing, so this behavior could be developmental. It is a skill which children must learn. So we will watch this behavior.

Another issue I discussed with the doctor is that Catherine writes some of her letters & numbers backwards. Sometimes she writes whole words backwards. Or she will write them horizontal, and then vertical (making a sideways L out of one word). She can write complete sentences, but sometimes forgets to put spaces between the words.

All of this, according to the neuropsychologist, is developmentally appropriate. If Catherine is still doing this in two years, then we should worry.

For phonics, the concern is that Catherine had lost a lot of hearing due to the chemo. I had tried to teach her to sound out words, with no success. Her teachers in kindergarten said they use phonics as well as sight words to teach reading. Each week they concentrate on a different letter. Catherine has picked up on phonics. She is starting to sound words out at home and will talk about the letter of the week all the time.

One reason that I am satisfied that she gets phonics and the sounds letters make are the nature of her mistakes. One night while I was taking her to choir she told me that "choir" started with "Q." I told her know, it starts with "CH." She corrected me and said that "CH" sounds like "church." It was very hard to explain that she is being taught a bunch of phonics rules by her teachers, but the rules are only applied sometimes. Poor thing.

This week the letter of honor is "S." So this afternoon I asked her to name 10 things that started with "S." She did well: snake, shoes, socks ... but then she said "cereal." Close!

So the nueropsychologist and I both felt that Catherine is getting phonics. Yeah!!