Hi, Mary Rumbold here. It's been a while since I last wrote a piece about Elliot for the newsletter, and so I figured it must be our turn to contribute once more. I have to start by saying how much we enjoyed the W.D.S. conference at London zoo. It's great to see the group growing and becoming more and more organised, and it's good to see so many new faces. I think the highlight of the day for me was having 'neuronal migration disorders' explained in an accessible way.

Some of you might be aware that Elliot was sponsored to climb Snowdon in June. I have to say he was just great, we were so proud of him. The weather was fine as we started out, but about 2/3rds of the way up it changed completely, and we had driving rain for some time. However, once he reached the top there was no dampening his spirits, he was so pleased with himself. Many thanks to those of you who sponsored Elliot; the money raised will be equally divided between his school, which is a special school for children with severe speech and language difficulties, and W.D.S. Research.

Elliot is 9 now, and just coming to the end of his first year at his new school in Cardiff. Changing schools was a bit of a gamble but it seems to be paying off as he is progressing in all areas. Number work though, still remains a big problem. Elliot has difficulty with co-ordinating his counting, e.g. he might point at objects on a page one at a time, whilst counting numbers out loud, but the pointing will often be at a faster pace than the speech sounds. His teacher also recently discovered that he has never got to grips with rhyming language, he just doesn't seem to be able to consistently identify words that rhyme.
At his old school Elliot was easily one of the most able children, whereas now he is the least able in many respects. Our hope was that if he was surrounded by a more able peer group this would encourage his own development both academically and socially. This certainly seems to be the case. Elliot loves his school and socialises well, and despite the fact that he is in a class a year younger than his age, and still with children who are academically higher achievers than he is, we have been pleased with his progress so far.

We are still waiting for assessments from the educational psychologist and the communication aids centre. Here in Cardiff, seeing an occupational therapist, even with a referral can take 12 months, which is a frustratingly long time when you have a child of Elliot's age who needs a dedicated computer in order to be able to fully access the curriculum.

For a long time Elliot has worn a sweat band around his wrist to help deal with his dribbling, but this has never been completely satisfactory and is now becoming a bit more of an issue as far as he is concerned. So we are trying 'hyocine patches'. They are quite effective and he likes using them, but they do leave him with a dry mouth over night and we wonder if this may disturb his sleep. Elliot has recently seen a specialist Speech and Language Therapist, and she has developed a series of exercises that we use to try and help him gain more control over his tongue and lips. I have definitely seen improvement in him, albeit slight, and we have only been doing them for about ½ a term.

At the moment Elliot's speech often seems to be more of a problem than at any time before, purely because it can be so frustrating trying to figure out what he is saying in ever longer utterances. His speech mostly consists of vowel like sounds, but his syllable lengths and intonation patterns are usually correct, and often offer the best clues. He uses signing to supplement his speech, a combination of Makaton which he used at his old school and Paget Gorman, which is used at his new school. Unfortunately though, many Paget signs are difficult to make for those with poor fine motor control. One thing we are sure of though, is that Elliot is a great one for communicating, and we can't wait until he has the 'right' communication aid, so that we don't always have to be available to interpret for listeners. Especially when the conversation is about Power Rangers, cars, heavy plant machinery or other such riveting topics!!!

I look forward to a time when as a group member it will be easier to contact other families within the group, especially when their child shares similar problems to your own, so that we can discuss strategies for dealing with specific problems.

Hope you all have hot and happy summer holidays.

Mary, Mick and Elliot Rumbold.