1. Charlotte has graduated from Physical Therapy but will be reassessed in six months. She still has exercises to do each night to help her along but the physical therapist was extremely pleased with how Charlotte has progressed. She said Charlotte will always be a bit behind in her gross motor skills but that fact that Charlotte has progressed as far as she has is amazing. Good job Charlotte . She worked hard in therapy and did her nightly exercises with us with minimal complaint (usually she asked to do them). So the credit truly does go to her.
2. Now Charlotte is beginning Occupational Therapy, beginning tomorrow. I am anticipating a short course, but have been in the business of kids long enough to know that such predictions are often proven wrong. We are going to get some help for some issues she has with sensory integration. About four months ago I began thinking, "If Charlotte were a kid I was seeing at my old job, I wold have referred her parents to an Occupational Therapist for a sensory integration assessment." At that exact same time, Charlotte's physical therapist told Emily we may want to have Charlotte assessed by an Occupational Therapist for sensory integration issues because Charlotte was freaking out about environmental sounds most kids her age no longer worry about.
Also, Charlotte is pretty intolerant of any moisture and dirt on her. So she will do some activities in Occupational Therapy to desensitize her reactions to this. And then I need help on how to help Charlotte cope with her disdain for environmental noises like thunder and trucks. I think we hit rock bottom a few months ago, in terms of how much it was bothering her and she is starting to self-regulate a little better. But it is still bugging her to the point that it is impacting her quality of life.
And I need to know when to intervene and when to let her sort it out on her own. The Occupational Therapist will help give us effective, clinically-based strategies. My instinct is to let Charlotte learn to figure it out on her own, but few weeks ago there I was, at dinner time, feeding Charlotte like a baby so she could cover her ears without interruption because she heard distant thunder once over a 30 minute period. That is no way for her or I to live. There are obviously better solutions out there and Charlotte, like most kids, will be more receptive to learning about and using these better solutions if they come from an adult teacher/helper, rather than from a parent.
3. Happy will be assessed by the Minneapolis Birth to Three Team (special ed) for low muscle tone. She is not yet standing alone and the pediatrician identified low muscle tone at Happy's 12 month wellness check. So she has low muscle tone like her sister, just not as bad. I know she won't qualify for services and we received excellent recommendations from Charlotte's physical therapist on things to do at home (hence the crawling around on the air mattress video) to help the motor development. But I wouldn't mind the birth to three team taking a comprehensive look at Happy and giving us their feedback and recommendations. She is behind in feeding, talking, and gross motor. I'm not at all concerned at this point but I'd rather have her on the radar than not, and would like to hear what recommendations they have. A team of experts looking at your kid's development never hurts.
My hunch is Happy is going to be standing on her own and walking in the next one to three months. In terms of speech and language, her language seems okay because she is using sign and is good, not great, with receptive language. I think her speech motor skills need a little more time to develop before she gets more words. So far she says, "Hi" and "night night" and maybe "Mama" and "Dada." About two weeks ago at lunch stared right at me, held up a banana and said, "Yu.... me" (yummy, which I often say to her). It took so much effort that I can see why she is not talking more at this point. Meanwhile, her disposition, self-regulation, patience, social skills, and play skills are pretty awesome.
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