But the Polanskys kept hoping she would somehow emerge unscathed. Then one afternoon in a restaurant, when Sophia was 4 months old, Elena started chatting with a woman sitting nearby with her own baby. That baby, born the day after Sophia, kept putting his hands in his mouth-something Sophia had never done. I compared her with an infant her age and saw that there was a huge difference. Fortunately for the Polanskys, they didn't have to wonder what to do next.
Similar programs exist in virtually every American community.
Soon, Sophia was working with physical, occupational, and speech therapists five times a week. Her doctors now suspect she has both cerebral palsy and epilepsy. I wouldn't have known what to do if it weren't for early intervention. Although Sophia, now 16 months, still cannot sit up or crawl like most of her peers, her parents are convinced she is much further along than she would have been without intervention. Every time they show us something, we work on it, and she gets better.