Assessment update
The Little Empress, avoiding the camera
Yesterday, The Hubs ™ and I attended The Little Empress’ assessment meeting to review how she’s progressed since we set some specific goals for her in June. Overall, her progress has been steady and consistent. Her gross motor and fine motor skills test at nearly 36 months old (!!); her cognitive and self-help abilities test at her current age level; but her social and expressive speech continue to be issues. At this point, she has more than a 50% delay in her expressive speech, which I wasn’t surprised about. What I was surprised about is that she is still testing at approximately a 50% delay socially. It is really sort of a head scratcher — she’s very friendly, she acknowledges that are kids around and she has some special friends that she shows appropriate affection with but she still doesn’t initiate play. New goals were set and now TLE has a bunch of new stuff to work on.We also confirmed that, yes, TLE will be at the center-based program until she ages out next March.
During the meeting, I was reminded about how absolutely lucky we’ve been with the county. When I joined a local special needs list, there was a lot of talk about how to advocate for your child and to push back when county denies services. Budgets are strained and they tend to try to cut corners were they can. We have a passionate case worker who advocates hard for her cases. She confessed to me that, if we had lived eleswhere chances are that TLE would have only gotten limited speech therapy which wouldn’t have helped her much at all. TLE’s speech therapist asked about the possibility of the county paying for more intensive speech therapy with TLE, considering her delays. I had already checked with our health insurance and they will not cover speech therapy that is not attributable to medical condition.
On the way home, The Hubs ™ and I discussed more things I can do at home with TLE to try to help her. That expressive speech component is important. I try my best not to compare TLE to other kids, reminding myself that she’ll gain speech at her own pace and that above all else, it is most important that she is healthy and happy. But it is still heartbreaking to realize that TLE isn’t like other kids; speech will be difficult for her for some time. While I know she’ll catch up eventually, I don’t want this to affect her self-esteem in the long run. And I know that the best way to do that is to continue to do what we’ve been doing: not comparing her to others, helping her when/where we can, using positive reinforcement and just loving and supporting her, no matter what.
Her therapists and teachers also brought up two more issues that we’re probably going to be dealing with for awhile. The first is TLE’s willful stubbornness. She simply refused to comply with many of the tests. The OT and her assistant had to jump through a lot of hoops to get her to do the gross motor tests. The program director, whom TLE loves, could not get her to comply with a simple game of peekaboo. She knew she could do it but TLE simply crossed her arms and shut her out. STUBBORN!! It is almost cute now but man oh man, I see a bumpy road ahead with her. TLE is very much about doing things her way. If it wasn’t her idea, it is hard to get her to go along with it. (I’d love to blame The Hubs ™ for this personality trait but sadly, I think she gets it from both of us. Add on top she’s an Aries cusp and we’ve got our hands full!!)
Another thing that the brought up was her attention span. Of course, toddlers don’t have much of an attention span to begin with but TLE’s lack of attention span also made it difficult for them to complete tests in a timely manner. Very easily distracted, she’d flit from activity to activity. And when she was done, she was done.
Oi. We’ve got our work cut out for us.
Read MoreProgress 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!
Read MoreProgress 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!!
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Text and photographs copyrighted by Michelle N unless otherwise noted.