Today Charlie had his annual assessment at Early Intervention. The purpose of this evaluation is to figure out what kinds of services he should have. Just like last year, there were three women in the room: an occupational therapist who looked at Charlie's fine and gross motor skills, an education specialist who evaluated Charlie's cognitive abilities, and a speech and language pathologist, who rated his languake skills.
The women had set up a plastic barn with farm animals and tractors for Charlie to play with. Then they tried to get him to do little tasks, like "Put the sheep on your head," which is like serving me a bologna sandwich and then asking me to do long division. How could one possibly concentrate with all that succulent lunch meat / bright green farm machinery? And besides, Charlie knows full well that sheep do not belong on your head.
He put pegs in a board, he scribbled with crayons, he completed a puzzle of a person, he found a plastic frog hidden under a washcloth, he jumped off a little step, he walked on a balance beam. In fact he did almost everything we asked, once we realized he could be bribed with tractors. Almost everything; he would not put the sheep on his head.
This is what they said: in gross and fine motor, cognition, and social skills, Charlie's development is at or above age level. In receptive and expressive language, Charlie tests at around 25 months.
Charlie is 27 months old.
The Children's Hospital speech path said he had the expressive language of a 16-month-old.
I mentioned this to the speech path, an older Russian lady named Galena. "Why did they say that?" she prompted me. "Because he doesn't string two and three words together," I said, which is what I myself had told the Children's person. Galena then read back to me a list of two- and three-word phrases Charlie had uttered during the evaluation and in playgroup: red nose, don't know, more big trucks, all done book.
Galena said that Charlie doesn't have any motor issues. He can make all the consonants; he's just being lazy. She recommended the same services Charlie gets now, and gave me some tips on how to get him to use his tongue and mouth muscles more. She said to cut his straws shorter so he has to make a tighter "o" and pull his tongue back harder, and give him only one bite of food on his plate at a time so he has to move the food around with his tongue instead of cramming his mouth full and just sort of waiting for the food to get mushy enough to swallow.
At the very end Kim, the occupational therapist, told me she thought that we
OUCH
Excuse me, Charlie just came up to me and stabbed me with his dinner fork to let me know that he wanted more chicken. Which felt GREAT.
The OT told me she thought we should have a physical therapist check Charlie out for low tone, because of the way he flopped on the floor all relaxed while he was playing and coloring. I think that is bologna with a capital M-A-Y-E-R, but we all know how much I like bologna, and if it means we can get our old PT Mary back in our life, then yes, yes, he's ever so floppy.
