My son is 25.5 months old and has been receiving speech therapy since he was 20 months old. He never repeated words or sounds, never said any words by 16 months so we took him to his pediatrician (Childrens Medical Associates in Alexandria) and he saw his normal pediatrician and the developmental pediatrician who both thought he was normal but recommended we get his hearing tested. We did, and his hearing was fine, so we were told to seek out an SLP. We started off at Chesapeake in Springfield but our insurance only covered 60 consecutive days, so we went through the City of Alexandria PIE program (we didn't even know it existed until we realized we'd have to start looking for alternatives to Chesapeake). He was learning sign language and some new words (he has about 10 right now) but I felt like something was wrong and there was more to the story. I had read about apraxia and realized my son showed many of the supposed signs (even though they differ so much from kid to kid) so I took him to a PROMPT certified SLP to get evaluated again, and she said that it was obvious he had a motor planning problem and that he has apraxia. We started PROMPT therapy with her about a week ago and it's been going great! He's very receptive to her and sit through the hands in his mouth part of therapy happily (which is amazing and such a blessing!) He's already added three new words to his repertoire. We're also giving him fish oil supplements daily and I feel like it is helping him a lot.

So now DS has three hours of speech therapy a week, two of them are private PROMPT therapy and one hour is the at-home based PIE speech therapy (which is play-based). I spoke to our coordinator in PIE who informed me that since DS turned 2, he's now eligible to get into the public Alexandria preschools that offer integrated classrooms. It sounds like something we would like very much for DS, since lots of social interactions were recommended by the developmental pediatrician as a means to improve his speech and communication skills (I'm a Stay at Home mom and he has play-dates but not as often as is probably needed).We would still get him the PROMPT therapy along with the preschool.

Has anyone had any experience with the preschool system in Alexandria that they would like to share? Is it good and beneficial? or should I seek out a private preschool? Also, we are considering moving to whichever county has better services, so if anyone had recommendations for which county offered great special needs services that would be great. Or if you would highly recommend a private preschool that would be great. Thanks so much in advance!