Torrefaction

Rather than try to do a whole developmental roundup, I'm going to do small ones on one thing at a time, because otherwise I'll never get around to it, and I do want this blog to be useful to parents of other kids with challenges similar to Charlie's.  

So, he's significantly delayed on speech, but the docs think it's a "soft delay" (one that should eventually resolve itself) brought on by temporary hearing troubles and over-dependence on his pacifier.  Also he stayed in the infant room at day care a lot longer than he would have if he had been walking on the expected (by day care) schedule.  Now that he's in the toddler room surrounded by talkers, he's got about 6 words that he uses regularly, at least when prompted, and 15 or so that we hear from time to time.  Plus a lot of babbling.  We blew bubbles out in the yard yesterday and he said "bubble bubble bubble!" over and over, and he understands that "bubble" and "ba-ba" are different words.  He also understands complex sentences, like "can you put the clothes back in the drawer now?" and "I want you to come over here and take your medicine without a fuss...one....two...three...ok, now we do this the hard way..."  He hasn't said any sentences, even short ones, consistently but he's making progress.  We're up in the air about speech therapy--we'll see how he does over the next couple of weeks.  He's making good progress, finally, but he's frustrated a lot of the time and can be aggressive (particularly with Mommy, boo), and having almost no words can't be helping.

We made a little video of him showing off his words.  He has not seen the Simpsons, by the way, but has picked up a bit of its vocabulary from us, because we are Simpsons nuts.

Video: 

We finally got Charlie moved up to the toddler room at day care today.  He *can* walk, but he mostly doesn't, preferring to go around upright on his knees.  We convinced daycare that he's sufficiently mobile to be in the room with the toddlers without needing a separate aide to protect him from getting stepped on or what have you. (They would provide one if we got an IEP specifying that, but we don't want to go that route at this point--we think he will be fine with just the normal level of supervision).  We'll back that up with a doctor's note so the daycare has what they need to stay within DCFS guidelines, but they went ahead and moved him today ahead of getting the note--YAY! 

We're hoping that being in a room full of walkers will encourage him to walk more.  Certainly he'll be happier among his peers and friends--he had been visiting them some, so he knows the kids already, and some of them were in the infants' room with him last year, too.  He loves playing with them, and the toys in the toddler room are appropriate for his age and size, etc.  The flip side is that he's probably going to get hurt, because toddlers are rough...but *he's* a toddler, and is just as likely to smack another kid (even though he's friendly) as another kid is to smack him.  No kid gloves for our boy, even though that's how the director of the daycare is inclined to treat him.  That's somewhat typical of folks supervising disabled kids in a mostly-abled-kids environment, but it doesn't do the kid any favors in the long run.

So, my big boy finally went to the toddler room for a full day and did regular toddler stuff along with the rest of the gang.  According to the director, they played outside and he got to play on one of their tricycles, which delighted him (as does his trike at home).  Then all the kids came back in and walked down the hall in formation, like they always do.  They had him up at the head of the group and he got down on his knees to go down the hall.  All the other kids looked at him and decided that was a great idea, apparently, because they all got down on their knees too, and the whole group went back to the room that way.

His first day, and he's already got the whole class backsliding on their motor skills! Ah, that's my boy.

Here is the official Fisher-Price toddler playing with the Fisher-Price musical table:

...and here is my toddler playing with it.


Getting him to start standing up (something he just started doing regularly) would have been a bit easier if one or two of the "stand to play" toys required him to, ya know, stand up.
( More pics & tales of standing up )