Miss(ter) Independent

I am currently (Friday, 11:30 a.m.) watching David taking an early nap – he was pretty worn out after his new home-based teacher worked with him for an hour, and I’m hoping an early nap and earlier wake-up time will help him get to sleep more easily tonight. He’s had a really hard time going to bed since we got back from our little trip. I think part of it is that he slept in his porta-crib all last week, and now he’s having trouble adjusting to being back in his little toddler bed. I’m hoping and assuming this will be over with soon, because there’s a lot of screaming (by him) and putting him back in bed involved.

The new teacher (her official title is Community-Based Rehabilitation Specialist or CBRS) was quite pleased with how he’s doing developmentally: verbally, gross- and fine-motor skills-wise. He is making some new little funny high-pitched squeaky sounds, and is working on the sign for “finished/all done.” She helped him build a wall of blocks and made up a little song to go along with tapping each block in sequence. He was able to tap the blocks in the same sequence and in the same way (with just his pointer finger) and he was (sort of) approximating the rhythm of the song, though with slightly different sounds.

Matt said last night, and I agree, that David seems to be getting more frustrated when he can’t communicate to us what he wants or needs. So now is a good time for some new signs and verbal skills. Combined with this increased frustration is an increase in his desire for independence – frequently when I’m playing with him, if I try to help him do something he’ll push my hand away. He is quite the little problem-solver, and he’s persistent and will try a couple of different approaches to doing something, especially if he’s done it before successfully (so he knows he can do it, it’s just going to take more effort this time). When he’s successful at all of these elements, the resulting “You did it all by yourself!” cheer is much enjoyed (and he will clap for himself in a heartbeat). But when he can't do it the resulting screeching is worse than it used to be, and he’ll kick away whatever blocks or cars are not cooperating. So him learning to sign “help,” and to understand when I’m asking/signing “what’s wrong?” or “what do you need?” would be a positive development.

His speech therapist once described to me a continuum of communication/representation, going from an actual object, to various representations of that object, to the spoken and written word as the ultimate symbols. For example, starting with an actual cat, then maybe a stuffed cat, a photo of a cat, a line drawing of a cat, finally to the spoken and then written word, “cat.” I’m using this example because Chicken the Wondercat is usually around somewhere, and a lot of his picture books have photos and drawings of cats and kittens. So working on linking these concepts will be one of our more deliberate tasks.

Initially my idea of all these therapies was that it would be this boring series of (physical and mental) exercises and drills, that both of us would come to dread. Thank goodness that’s not the case – all the therapists do a great job of working everything in naturally, so to David it’s just another way of playing. The CBRS used to come twice per month, but we are increasing to weekly because his speech therapist feels he is on the verge of greatness, communication-wise, and an increase in frequency will give him a little boost over the edge. Plus, he’ll be 2 ½ next month, and that’s when the Early Intervention providers are legally required to start preparing him to transition to the school system, who will be responsible for him once he turns 3. So we’ll only be working with this team for 7 more months and at present I have no idea what services will look like after that, so I agree it’s good to load him up now.

So, a summary of services that may not be particularly interesting to anyone but us, but hey that’s what’s on the radar for today. This Sunday (8/12) will be the second anniversary of David’s open-heart surgery, so I need to get to work on deciding what kind of heart-themed cake we’ll have this year – last year’s was a lot harder than I expected it would be, so I’ll have to figure out something else.