Henry's Developmental Evaluation

On Tuesday, Henry and I dropped off Miss R at school. Henry stayed with me as it was his "big" evaluation day. We dropped off Miss R at 9:15AM. With some time to spare, we went to The Glass Onion so that Henry could try a No Yoko, the breakfast that he hears me ordering in the morning. So common is this order that the kids pretend to order No Yokos on their toy cell phones. He enjoyed coloring in a coloring book at the coffee shop. He enjoyed walking around. He set off their synthesizer (luckily few people were in the shop). He ate some of the No Yoko, but he wasn't enthralled with the egg whites and avocado.

We went across town for the school district evaluation of Henry's needs. As I've mentioned before, at age 3, early intervention cases are transferred from the state's early intervention program and handled by the school districts, if a continued need is established. I was a bit disappointed to hear that the OT decided not to give an evaluation b/c Henry scored well on the over-the-phone assessment done by his early intervention coordinator. I thought that particular test was overly vague and I confess that I don't trust the developmental coordinator's judgment. Because he was perfectly average on that test (based on the assumption of him being evaluated as a three year old, even though he was probably 2 yrs 4 months adjusted when I gave the answers), the OT decided it wasn't worth the time. She said that his scores were surprising for him being born a micropreemie, who usually don't "catch up" until they are in their threes. I will refrain from my soapbox on the phrase "catch up."

I told the OT that I still had some concerns. So she gave him a puzzle with which to play. The puzzle had a fruit theme. The pieces came out of the puzzle but the backboard of the puzzle contained no color, so this was not a matching of pictures task. Henry actually did pretty well getting the fruit pieces to fit in the puzzle. She also had him scribble on a piece of paper. She wanted him to draw two lines and some circles. It took some effort to get him to participate. He didn't really do a line so much as a dot/streak, but she considered that sufficient. His circles were pretty good (they resembled something with curves). She said that drawing was clearly not his favorite task, but she would have evaluated his skills approximately in the 3.5 year old range. I was pleased in some ways, but I confess that I don't quite believe that he has 3.5 year old fine motor skills. He isn't nearly as coordinated as Miss R.

Henry had an extended session with the speech pathologist. It was about an hour long session of speech testing. I hung back as I've read that parents can screw up a child's evaluation by hovering. Usually, the parent gets anxious and tries to get the kid to do the task, which can be problematic as kids need to be able to do some tasks in the absence of parents. The psychologist asked me who had worked with him on speech. I said no one. Speech had not been one of our concerns. Our concerns were related to his gross and fine motor skills. He was surprised to hear that (which resembled a comment by the Child Find coordinator who said, back in December, that all of the kids admitted to their program had speech issues). The speech pathologist said that she wouldn't know how to rate him specifically until she ran the numbers, but she thought that he'd done very well. On enunciation of words, he is age appropriate. He still doesn't quite say "r" and "l" sounds correctly, but most toddlers don't. On language receptivity, she said that she was asking him some questions of the 4-year old battery. The speech pathologist asked who his ST was, and I again explained that he hadn't had one. She did notice that his attention began to wane during the test. She said that he is too young to determine whether that's a meaningful observation or just a reflection of him being a toddler. She was able to "redirect" his attention.

We rounded out the session with a quick visit from the PT. Again, they hadn't planned to test him, except for my concerns about toe walking and arm placement. She said that his toe walking seems to present itself when he is excited, but she observed that he "can" walk on his whole foot (which I had told them at the outset). I observed that he would appear "excited" quite a bit as he spends a good part of the day on his toes. Regarding his arm, she said that to the extent he can bear weight on both arms, the arm thing isn't something she considered problematic. She said that we should having him do wheel barrows so that he can build up and use both sides equally. She also had him do a duck walk, which requires some squatting making it difficult to toe walk.

I heard the group of evaluators say that he is "solid." We have a meeting in two weeks to get their official recommendation, but I'm confident that as predicted, he will no longer qualify for intervention.

I decided not to return Henry to school. As Tuesday is Miss R's bio sibling visitation day and we wouldn't be picking her up, I didn't think that putting Henry in school a couple hours would be worth it as he'd have missed lunch by the time we got there and then would be put down for nap. I've missed the kids with my 17-hour work days the past week and a half (not a typo nor exaggeration). As much as I wanted to get some sleep, I opted instead to spend the day with Henry.

I took him to Golf'N'Stuff. When we arrived, I insisted that I change his diaper, despite his insistence that he was dry. During the changing, we had the following conversation:

HENRY: I'm a bad boy.
KATE: You're a bad boy? Oh. That makes me sad.
HENRY: No, I'm a good boy. Mommy's happy.

We played video games. We "played" miniature golf (well, we carried golf clubs around anyway), and Henry liked putting the balls into holes and they would appear on another level of the course. We also played a round of air hockey. My job was made easy as Henry had fun scoring on himself. He enjoyed the SpongeBob car game that they also have a Monkey Business. Henry's favorite game, however, was a whack-a-mole game. We went to lunch at IHOP where Henry had almost all of his short stack of buttermilk pancakes with blueberry syrup.

Henry's nap consisted of 15 minutes of sleep in the car on the way to IHOP. When we got home, Jeff took over and I was able to take a nap for a couple hours.

Miss R and Henry were loud and happy during dinner. Before dinner, they'd gone on a walk with Jeff and Lily. Roger refused to go on the walk for some reason. Henry announced that he was king during dinner.

After dinner, we played with the Goodnight Moon puzzle. Then I read the kids "The Haunted House," "Hamilton," and "Fidgety Fish." Miss R is beginning to be able to finish sentences like Henry does, which is nice to see. Love that she is engaging with the books. Then, it was time for bed.