Aaliyah is a vivacious blonde charmer. Born October 22, 2012 in Philadelphia, PA. Aaliyah loves music. She loves to sing and dance. She ADORES Elsa from "Frozen" (or anything relating to Frozen for that matter). Just looking at her you would not know she had any issues, other than being somewhat sassy and strong-willed.

Our story starts with her adoptive placement with us 3 years ago. Soon after her placement we started noticing odd behaviors and weak physicality. We were initially told that these behaviors could be contributed to placement trauma; and that her physicality could be contributed to the neglect she had been subjected to. She was initially diagnosed with sensory processing and vestibular processing disorders; and also with a delay in the development of the mid-brain (which caused her not to be able to cross the mid-line). She has been in physical and occupational therapy for over 3 years. We added speech therapy just over a year ago because of cognitive issue we were starting to notice. What really caught our attention was that with the length of all these therapies, we weren't realizing the type of gains we expected. We knew her biological parents had ADHD and cognitive issues. But we had to wait until she was old enough to be evaluated for ADHD (even though our intuition told us she had it, not to self...ALWAYS TRUST YOUR GUT).

Aaliyah was finally diagnosed with ADHD in Dec of 2018 and with 22q on February 14, 2019 (Happy Valentines). We are now going to run the gamut of consultations to see how much of her body is affected. The 22q diagnosis explains a lot fo the issues we were observing, including an umbilical hernia out of nowhere.

We are currently undergoing an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) evaluation through the school and will more than likely have her repeat kindergarten.

She is such a hard worker. Once she was on her meds, she went from being evaluated as a non-reader to being on par with her peers in a matter of a month! Mathematics remains her Achilles heel. She has started to make improvements in cognition. She is still having issue with spacial relationships and tends to write backwards.

We are happy to have found this resource! And we look forward to hearing from other parents who have similar experiences.

Update....

On 2/21/2019 We had our first Cardiology consult, where an echocardiogram was performed. Aaliyah does have a Atrial Septum Defect, that has gone unnoticed until now. The reason being is that it is small (1-2mm). The cardiologist does not feel that surgery is necessary. We have a followup in year to reassess.

We have an ENT visit next month, and an Endocrinologist in May and back to Genetics in July. We are hopeful that we've seen the extend of the problems. But are keeping an open mind in case we haven't.