Developmental Assessment Results

This morning we had Oliver's 24 month old developmental assessment. Here are the results:

- His hearing is great. That is important to rule out with language development. We're really thankful for this :)

- He is at 19 months for language/speech, so he has more than a 20% delay and therefore needs therapy. We will begin with once a week. We expected this so although we aren't happy about it. We are hopeful that with proactive intervention he'll get back on track quickly.

- His cognitive skills are at 19 months as well. The psychologist today (Sarah) reported that he was almost exactly where he was in October at our assessment in Boston. We are glad he hasn't regressed any further, but there hasn't been much progress. Sarah expects this to catch up once the therapies are in place and the Spasms/med issues are worked out. She said she "wasn't alarmed", and wouldn't redo this test until he was 2 1/2.

- The real concern that came from the evaluation was related to Occupational Therapy needs. An Occupational Therapist is scheduled to come over on Monday to do a complete test and set up a therapy schedule. Sarah was very adamant that this was our top concern, which was a total surprise to us.

- They also noticed is that Oliver is constantly putting things in his mouth. We've worried about this in the last few weeks, because it has seem much more extreme than regular teething. The pre-school teachers mentioned this on Monday, and how they could not get him to stop. We tried all yesterday afternoon to get him to keep things out of his mouth and it seemed like he couldn't help himself. Apparently this is related to sensory processing problems, and needs intervention asap.

- They also talked about his "awareness of self in space." As you probably noticed (if you've seen him recently), he is super clumsy and all over the place- all the time. I suppose because he has been this way for a while now, we just thought that was how it was going to be. The seizure meds are probably to blame, but we need him to be more aware of where his body is and he will therefore be less likely to hurt himself.

-We are encouraged by hearing that the Occupational Therapist may have some recommendations for Oliver's sleeping problems. It could be related to some of his sensory issues, and of course his seizures. We would love to figure out how to get some sleep in this house! Perhaps the 3 seizures he had yesterday and the 2 this morning are related...who knows?

--We feel a mix of emotions. We are thankful he doesn't have more delays and that we have "caught" many of his issues early. We are discouraged that he has more needs than we thought. Andrew said it well when he said "it feels like the weight has gotten heavier." We certainly expected the speech/language recommendations but, were surprised by their concern about occupational therapy needs. We are so glad we have access to these services, and are anxious to get them in place.

Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. Each note, kind word, etc... is a boost to carry us through these hard times. Thanks for loving us and our sweet boy!