Progress Report: Months 3 and 4
TLE feeding her baby
I didn’t get much of a chance to write about The Little Empress and her school so now that I’ve got a moment, I figure I may as well talk about that. During her third month of school, I had a few meetings with her teachers and program coordinators to discuss her developmental goals. It seems that she will be in the program until she ages out at 3 years old which is fine by me since she is making so much progress. She also had a home visit that went horribly. TLE is notoriously bad with transitions and the arrival of her teachers (who belong IN SCHOOL in her toddler world) showing up on her doorstep, was too much for her to take. She melted down into a tantrum that lasted over an hour. The upside was that her therapist and teacher got to witness first hand the behavior issues I’d talked about during her evaluation. They took some notes and talked to her OT. Later, her OT and I had a meeting of our own and developed a sensory diet for TLE which, so far, has helped a lot. She still has melt downs but the severity has decreased as has the length of her tantrums. (THANK GOD!! One hour tantrums nearly every day are not for the faint of heart.)
She had a mini-language explosion around the end of June and beginning of July. She went from having only a few sounds to suddenly she began mimicking words on a frequent basis — it surprised us as well as her teachers! The mini-explosion has continued through till August. She seems to be adding new words to her vocabulary every day. I don’t think she has more than 100 yet but she’s getting there! She’s begun to show that she likes animals, a lot. She seems to especially love monkeys! She still can’t say the word “monkey” but she’ll make the sign for “monkey” and make monkey sounds.
Two absolutely huge things that she’s done lately: Within the last month, she actually said her name!!! She won’t say it all the time if you ask her, “What’s your name?” but she has been able to say it once or twice when asked. AWESOME!!! Within the last week, she’s been using the word “me” and “mine”, something she hasn’t done before. I”m so happy that her language is improving so much! The upside is that now that she has more of a vocabulary, she seems to be far less irritable and less easily frustrated since we can better understand her.
I think one of the craziest things about her speech issues is the fact that she seems like she’s trying to say sentences. I’ve heard her say four word sentences like “Where did it go?” but this is rare. It is almost like she wants to run before she can walk. Another funny thing is that she doesn’t have a word for “yes”. She has plenty of ways to say “no” but “yes” is not a word she says. Her nod is absolutely adorable, though. Instead of just nodding her head, she has this funny tendency to nod with her whole body. It is pretty adorable.
Socially, she’s a little butterfly. She is the class hugger as she seems to like to hug just about everyone. She still especially loves her friend Mauricio — and will occasionally ask about him at home saying, “Muh-muh-muh” with this adorable little half smile — and loves to hug her teachers, too. I was a bit worried when she first started school as she had seemed aloof and disinterested in other kids her age when I’d taken her to playgroups but it doesn’t seem like she’s this way with her classmates at all.
At home, she’s started to do a lot more pretend play with her dolls and toys in the last month or so. In the photo above, she’s playing with her baby doll. She happily rocked, nursed and cuddled her “baby” and even put her in her booster seat so she could feed her while she was eating her dinner! She never did this before so I was pretty amazed to see how loving she was to her little “baby”. She also seems to love Pixar movies. She loves all animated movies but Pixar’s Up and Monsters Inc. seem to be her favorites right now and she will constantly ask to watch these two movies over. and over. and over again. She likes pointing out the characters and telling me if they’re “happy” or “sad”. Sometimes, when she’s watching a TV show, she’ll turn to me and say, “Help, help!” if the character on screen seems like they need help or are sad. She gets very into her shows now!!
Of course, she’s on vacation for most of the month of August. Yikes! Nearly three weeks of her at home every day… I almost don’t know what to do! Luckily, the OT and the OT intern at school provided the families with lots of fun activity ideas. I hope I can keep up with her!
Upcycle: “Work” Books
Now this upcycle is so simple that I don’t think I really need to write a tutorial for it. But I’m going to anyway. Sort of.
Take an old, large paperback book. (As a former IT ninja support peon person, I have a library of certification books laying around. Unfortunately, since the certification industry likes to change tests every, oh, three years or so, many of the books I still have are woefully out of date. This is a decent way to upcycle them. If you don’t happen to have a books from a former IT career laying around, you can use phone books for this upcycle.) Also grab a pair of scissors and duct tape.
Duct tape, duct tape, duct tape. It’s fun to say! 
[Note to self: Time to stop channeling Deadpool...]
Book, duct tape, scissors
Cover the book in duct tape and you have…
Duct tape "work" book
A DUCT TAPE COVERED PHONE BOOK!
Um, yay?
Whatever would you use this for? (Other than, of course, admiring your duct tape handiwork?)
Well, one of the first toys I noticed at The Little Empress’ developmental preschool were the duct tape covered phone books. They are a simple, open ended toy that can be used for anything from heavy work activities to strength building exercise to toddler obstacle courses. One day, as I arrived to pick up TLE from school, one of her teachers was sitting close by as TLE set up an obstacle course for herself and hopped from book to book. That was when I knew I had to add this to our home sensory toy collection.
So what sort of activities can you do with this deceptively simple toy? Stay tuned…
Activity – Bottle + Pasta
Playing with Pasta
I’m always on the lookout for fun activities for The Little Empress to do after school and during the weekends. She does well in school but is very prone to meltdowns once we’re home. We’ve discovered that the key to preventing her epic meltdowns is to keep her busy with activities that appeal to her nearly insatiable drive for sensory input. As I am sure you can imagine, it is always better to provide a safe and fun activity rather than leave her to her own devices. (When left to her own devices shortly after she’d finished with this, she was upstairs climbing onto counters. Oi.)
This is a simple and fun activity that I copied from her school involving an empty parmesan bottle.
MATERIALSNOTE: You don’t have to use pasta for this activity; it is just what I had on hand. Other fun objects that you could use include coffee stirrers, pompoms, chenille stems, whatever you have handy. WHAT IT TEACHES KIDS This activity helps teach kids about size (what fits, what doesn’t), fine motor skills (placing objects through small openings with precision) as well as provides tactile (handling the pasta) and visual stimulation (the shapes of the pasta and colors.) HOW TO PLAY Gather the materials and set them in front of the child. If they’ve never seen the activity before, demonstrate how the objects can be put into the container through the different sized openings. Have the child experiment with what will fit and what won’t fit. Another fun thing to do is figure out how to get all the objects out of the container once they are in.
- Empty parmesan bottle (with two different openings)
- Pasta (long & short)
The Little Empress showing off her handiwork
She’s seen it before at school so she was delighted to play at home. She happily dove into the activity which kept her busy for about a half hour as she stuck pieces of pasta into the parmesan bottle and then shook them out. It is pretty rare for something to hold her attention for so long so I was more than delighted with the results.
Shaking it out
And here’s another adorable photo of The Little Empress as she shakes the pasta out of the bottle. I just love the expression on her face.
Progress Report: 2 months
The Little Empress, chillaxin'
The Little Empress has now been in school for 2 months. Compared to when she first entered school in April, she has a much larger vocabulary both verbally and signing. Her vocabulary is still limited to mostly one word utterances with the exception of her “were’do” sentences as in “mama were’do” (Where’d Mommy go?). It seems that every week, she’s learning more and more at school and becoming far more confident. She seems to have some trouble with pronunciation which doesn’t surprise me given her delay. She does identify “fwah” (flower) and “tee” (tree) and imitates the sounds for car and dog. She mimics words a lot now and does try to repeat new words.
Now that she can talk a little, her frustration isn’t so much that she’s not being understood but rather that we’re not letting her do what she wants. So basically, she’s being a typical, stubborn toddler. We’re not having quite as many tantrums as we were before but the ones we do have are still major blow outs. She’s also much more assertive of her independence these days, making her will known, sometimes at the top of her lungs. One dismaying development is that she’s very prone to getting physical when she doesn’t get her way. This isn’t too surprising considering she’s still very much a kinesthetic learning/communicator but it is something that I really need to get under control, fast. She’s pretty skinny but extremely muscular and when her arms and legs go flailing, she’s really capable of doing some damage. She’s kicked me, hard, a few times as well as slapped several people. I’m having a LOT of trouble disciplining her. Redirection and gentle reminders are generally ignored, despite repetition. I have a 1-2-3 rule. First time, I”ll redirect, second time, I’ll remind with a warning and third time, she’ll get slapped on the wrist. Mind you, I’m not against spanking in general (which is about the only AP principle I don’t agree with) but I think for TLE, it is not as effective simply because she doesn’t seem to even feel hand slaps. She simply giggles and goes right on doing what she’s doing.
Socially, she’s improving as well. She’s still very much a “I’ll approach you” rather than a universally friendly toddler, she is definitely taking interest in other kids she sees around her which she didn’t really do before. Although, about a month ago, I noticed that when a kid at the playground fell and hurt himself, all the little kids rushed to his side to see what was going on… except for TLE who couldn’t care less. That was a bit concerning. I haven’t had her outside of her classmates lately so I’ll have to see if this reaction has changed any lately.
Speaking of her classmates, she is also quite attached to them! She likes the girls in her classroom and has lots of little friends. She has one classmate in particular named Mauricio — a cute little guy with blond hair and glasses — who she absolutely adores. If you name all her classmates, she may smile but when you ask her about Mauricio, she gets a goofy little grin on her face and says “Muh-muh-muh”. My little one has a boyfriend! At age 2! When I told The Hubs ™, he growled a little. In his humble opinion, baby girls aren’t supposed to get boyfriends until… well, ever. Or if they must, at the age of 25 and done with graduate school.
Progress Report: 1+ month
When I picked up The Little Empress from school on last Friday, her teacher was thrilled to report that she was a very good talker that day. She’s signing a lot more at school and verbalized “peas?” (please) and “hep” (help) when she needed help doing something. She’s doing a lot of mimicking, repeating sounds that other people are saying as well as mimicking animal sounds like a horse’s neigh.
This is so big. For the past few weeks, there hasn’t been too much that has changed aside from more babble sounds but now that she’s starting to add words to her vocabulary, I am getting so excited! She’s responding so well to her school and she loves her classmates and teachers. I’ve noticed now that she’s trying to speak more at home too which is great. She may come to us babbling but if we remind her, “Use your words, say ‘please’” rather than letting us tug on her, she’ll usually oblige with the cutest “pease?” you could ever imagine. She now regularly says “up” in addition to her sign for it (standing with her arms above her head) which we have been trying to encourage for close to a year now.
While she’s still pretty hyperactive, she’s not so quick with the tantrums. She will try to use her words more often than not though she may not always be able to get her point across. I’ve noticed that she’s starting to sing as well as dance. She doesn’t really have actual words to her singing, of course, but she does babble in melody and has an amazing sense of rhythm. I’m so excited to see all these developmental improvements! All right!!
“Noooo…!”
One of the potential “upsides” of The Little Empress taking her sweet time to say words was the fact that she didn’t really have a word for “no”. For the longest time, she would simply shake her head if she didn’t want something. Eventually she added “nu-uh” to her vocabulary which was often punctuated with a cute little shake of the head.
A few days before she started school, it seemed that she had found a word for “no” but instead of “no” it came out more like “mo”. And this too was absolutely adorable as she still couldn’t quite get the “n” sound for “no” and would simply whine “mooooooooooo” (as in an elongated “mow” rather than the sound cows make) instead of saying “no”.
Her first day of school, she had a new word: no. She had the dreaded N – O word and she could say it without too much difficulty. For a few weeks, she tested out the new no a few times but still relied on “nuh-uh” or shakes of the head to get her point across.
These past few days has seen a huge uptick in the usage of the word no. Instead of a simple “no” it is now “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” complete with the bold and exclamation points. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” is her instant reaction to just about anything we ask her these days, whether we’re suggesting that it is time for her bath, time to sleep or hell, even to ask if she would like a cookie for breakfast.
My child says no to cookies for breakfast. What. the. hell?! Obviously, I have not trained her correctly.
Now I think it is safe to say that the with the arrival of the word “no” (and meaning it — boy does she mean it!!) that the Terrible 2s are (finally?) here in force.
Is it too much of me to hope that the next word that she adds to her vocabulary may be something of the affirmative? I’d love a “yes” to contrast the “no” every once in awhile.
Progress and doubt
Today marks marks hump day of The Little Empress’ third week of school. After going to school for just over two weeks now, TLE is showing some great progress. She’s signing a lot more and vocalizing more sounds. Her teachers give me an update every day on her progress. On Monday, they reported that TLE was now signing her versions of “more” and “all done” when eating. Today, they told me that she’s imitating a lot more, gaining sounds and using words like “boat”.
For some, a 25mo saying random things like “boat” may not seem like that much of an accomplishment but after nearly a year of waiting with bated breath for actual words rather than babble, I am absolutely over the moon. (“Moon” is also another one of TLE’s new words, one that she crowed delightedly with my parents while they were in the backyard over the weekend as TLE gleefully pointed up at the “moooooooooon”!!)
To the best of my knowledge, she’ll be in her current school for at least 6 months at which time she’ll be re-evaluated for eligibility. Her particular school requires a 33% or more delay in two or more areas meaning at 30 months old, she would be developmentally equivalent to a 20mo old in order to remain her class. It is a eligibility requirement that I rather she not meet — meaning I’d rather that she was closer to her biological age — though I think she will be sad not to attend school any longer. The Hubs isn’t sure she’ll be meeting that criteria in 6 months but given the progress we’ve seen in not even three weeks, I think it is quite possible she’ll meet the 20 month developmental cut off though she may not be where she should be in biological age.
She’s making such great progress at school that I have began to give some serious thought about what comes next. My initial plan was not to return to full-time work until TLE was in kindergarten. Now, I’m not so sure. She’s doing so well in a group setting that I’m beginning to doubt that being a stay at home mom is really the best for her. After all, I’ve been home for two years and I have a child who is nearly a whole year behind in speaking.
I feel like a failure as a stay at home mom. There. I admitted it out loud. I feel like I’ve failed my daughter and that the best thing to do is to put her in a daycare setting where she can thrive and learn with other little kids while I do something more productive than ruin my child. It is discouraging that as a writer, my words help put food in my child’s mouth yet I cannot find the right ways to encourage her to use words herself.
I know that I’ve been told that her speech delay is not my fault. I know that may just be me beating myself up over something I can’t control but the guilt is really eating me up. As much as it gives me joy to see her enjoying herself, to be playing and learning at school, it pains me to think that I fell short providing her with fun learning opportunities. What else could I have done? What else should I be doing? Do I not encourage her enough? Don’t I give her enough opportunities to learn, play and grow at home? Did turning on the TV ruin her? Is it because I spent too much time on my computer? Should I have force-read to her when she turned her head and cried whenever I tried to read to her? What did I do? What didn’t I do?
All I want is to do what is best for her. But now I am beginning to doubt that being home with her is best. I feel so lost right now.
Progress report: Week 2
I’m happy to report that we’ve successfully survived two full weeks of The Little Empress going to school! Aside from the fact that it is a 15 mile drive through windy back roads to get to her school, I think we’re doing well with our new commuting situation. We’re (usually) up and at ‘em at 6:00AM when The Little Empress wakes to start her day. Not bad for a family that just two weeks ago started their day at 8:30AM.
It feels so good to be out of the house! I can tell that TLE really loves her school. She’s with little ones her age and she gets to play all day. This early intervention program is nothing short of a godsend for both of us. She is so much happier now that she’s in an environment that is interactive and fun. Plus I am so much happier that I have time to actually work as well as decompress without feeling guilty.
After her second week at school, TLE’s vocabulary is improving very slightly. The few words that she already had are slightly clearer. She learned the word “no” (in addition to her usual “nu-uh”) during her first week, probably in response to other children 
She tries to verbalize a lot more than she did before which I am taking as a good sign. She has a few more words including “ball” and “bubble” and is working a lot on her “b” sounds. I’ve heard other sounds out of her this week that I hadn’t heard previously. They’re still nonsense gibberish but the fact that she’s practicing sounds is hopeful. The fact that she still uses “mama” as an all purpose word (there’s a certain intonation when she means Mommy and she can say and mean “dadee”) is a bit disconcerting.
One thing that she’s doing a lot more of is signing. I do regret not teaching her to sign earlier but at least she’s picking up quickly on it. She now has signs for “sleep”, “nursing”, “shoes”, “milk”, “hungry” and “more” though not all of them are actual ASL. But the important thing is that she is starting to get her point across and it is making life a little easier as far as not tantruming at the drop of a hat.
I believe we are due for a status check on her progress in 6 weeks, where her teachers will report on how she’s doing and how far along she’s coming. I honestly don’t know what to expect as far as improvement goes. Six months is when she’ll be re-evaluated to see if she’s still eligible for services at the center. To continue to qualify for her school, children have to have a 33% or more delay in two or more areas. I am not sure that 6 months will be enough to get her speaking better than a 20 month old but we’ll see.
Starting school
Here’s an update on The Little Empress’ speech issues that I mentioned before. I spoke with our case manager who put me in touch with a not-so-local children services center that works with developmentally delayed kids. (Not-so-local as in it isn’t as close as I’d like but certainly within a reasonable driving distance.) All in all, I’d say that it has taken about a month and a half to two months of paperwork and waiting to get the ball rolling on her therapy. From what I’ve found with other families that qualified for Early Intervention services, this seems to be about average.
We made an appointment to meet with the coordinator and take a tour of the facilities which seemed nice. TLE roamed the classroom while the coordinator explained the program. Basically it is a modified preschool program, five days a week, for kids ages 18 months to 3 years with some sort of developmental delay. Everything about it is like daycare or preschool for tots, with specialists to help them address their developmental challenges. Some kids in the program have speech delays, like TLE, while others may have motor or cognitive delays. We have another appointment next week to fill out paperwork and let TLE get acclimated to the environment before she officially starts school the day after Easter.
Wow. She’ll be starting school at the age of 2. I can just hear her screeching later on in life that her parents put her in school as a toddler, not even waiting until she was preschool aged. 
Sure, it is a modified school and specifically to address her speech delay but still, technically is school.
To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this. I worry about TLE being in an environment that is completely foreign to her. She hasn’t been away from me for more than two hours, at most, since I’ve been home. Her separation anxiety has gotten better but will she adjust quickly to the new environment? The coordinator assured me that all kids cry but will get used to the separation from their parents.
When I heard “group therapy” suggested, I had assumed that I would be with her. The idea of sending her off for care for a good chunk of the day had not occurred to me as an option. It got me thinking — what if being at home wasn’t the best idea for her? Is being at home with me the cause of her speech delay? Would she have fared better if we had put her in a mixed care environment like day care? And with these thoughts came the self doubts — am I a bad mother?
Since the school is about 15 miles from home, I’ll probably be better off finding a place to hunker down for a few hours than going home. Suddenly, I have a few hours to myself which is something I’ve been wishing for awhile now. I can work again, maybe do more than two or three pieces a week. With enough discipline, I can finish my first novel draft like I’ve been hoping to by June. I find myself excited, giddy even, with the thought of a few hours to relax with a cup of coffee and a stack of novel notes.
Then I sober at the thought of leaving my little one for hours in the care of strangers. Nice, well trained strangers but strangers to me nonetheless. I wasn’t planning on having her start school so soon. But I know that, at this point in time, it is for the best.
For now, she’s eligible for 6 months of therapy, to be reevaluated in September on her progress. Children age out of the program at 3 years old and then it is onto the school district. Hopefully she’ll catch up by then. But we’ll see how it goes.
Better late than never
While I’ve alluded to the fact that The Little Empress is turning out to be slow to speak, I have been a bit hesitant to talk about it openly. The reasons for this are varied but a lot of it comes down to guilt and feeling like I have somehow failed her as a mother. But I realize that hiding and avoiding a situation only tends to aggravate worry than alleviate it. Rather than worry in private, I figure that it is time to start talking about it and document what steps we will be taking to help TLE overcome it.
The Little Empress had begun to babble pretty early on in infancy and I was always sure that her first word was just around the corner. By 12 months she still had not uttered her first word but I was not worried — surely it was coming soon. But when her 18 month birthday slipped by without “Mama” or “Dada”, I began to get concerned. At her well child check at 18 months, our family doctor wasn’t particularly worried as TLE was obviously alert, curious and capable of understanding what was going on around her.
By about 22 months old, TLE’s had developed a small vocabulary, main filled with simple, two syllable words and a few garbled phrases. Though I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t gauge TLE’s development by comparing her to other children her age, I double checked her development against widely accepted milestones for her age. By my unprofessional estimates, her vocabulary was behind though her comprehension was about where it should be. I asked around online, seeking advice from other Moms. Several Moms advised me to look into early intervention programs through the county. After doing some research online, I found the early intervention specialists in our area.
About
My name is Michelle. I write, I shoot and I mom, not necessarily in that order. I'm aware that 'mom' isn't widely accepted as a verb but I think it should be.I'm a self-professed geek and caffeine addict. (Some may argue that the latter is a requirement of the former.) I live with my husband and our daughter in the California Delta.
Want to know more about us? Click here.
Follow Me
