Elie's Eval

Today we meet with Erin a Licensed Medical Social Worker from the Kent Intermediate School Districts Early On program. The Early On program was recommended to us when our public health nurse first came to see Eloise when she came home from the hospital. Early On is a free service through the school district for children birth to three years old and helps children who have a developmental delay or health issue that may lead to a developmental delay. Due to Elie's prematurity we were referred to the program for an evaluation. Erin came to our house this afternoon and meet with me and Eloise to see how she is doing. Her current adjusted age is 5 months and 3 weeks so that is the point at which Erin used to gage Elie's progress. It was interesting getting a professional prospective of how she is doing. I was feeling she was really progressing well in the last few weeks. She has rolled from her tummy to her back and is sitting up for long periods of time. Although this is good she is missing out on some major milestones that are crucial to her progress. Eloise has a very week trunk which needs to be strengthen. The trunk is a major factor is many movements like rolling, crawling and walking but it is also very important for eating and speaking. Erin did tell me not to worry to much about trying to feed her solid foods but to just try and work on it a little bit at a time. She said this will get easier for her once she gets better trunk control. She also said that most eating specialist are recommending that babies don't start on solids until around 6 months now since they feel most babies aren't developmentally ready until then. So what did she see that needs work. For the most part she observed that Elie likes to move forward and backwards but does not go side to side. So for that we are to work on tummy time getting her to rotate her body to reach toys on the sides of her. I had asked about her ability to grab toys but not let go and she said this is something that they also learn during tummy time when they are moving. As Elie learns to move she will open her hand to push herself around teaching her to open and close her hand. Another observation was that she favors her right side. She reaches with her right to grab toys and rolls to her right. With this we are to concentrate on giving her toys that focus her to reach with the other hand and help her learn to roll to the other side. The final area that we need to focus on is her whole body stiffness. Eloise really likes to stand and loves playing in her exersaucer. I thought of this as a good thing but found out today that it really hinders her development. The stiffness makes it difficult for the side to side movement mentioned above and prevents her from getting into a crawling position. The exercise we were given to help loosen her up was to basically get her into a catcher's squatting position with both feet flat on the ground and roll her forward and back. We tried this today while Erin was her and I could feel Elie trying to push up into standing. She didn't get upset with the exercise but I could tell she wanted to stand up. We are also to limit/eliminate her time in the exersaucer and were even given a flyer on why walkers & exersaucers are not the best thing for babies. It is funny because Trey and I were not big fans of the exersaucer with Cecelia and she was rarely in it but with Eloise we have found ourselves putting her in it more because she likes it and can see everything. I guess we should have stuck with our originally feelings. Oh well. I also mentioned that Elie has not been grabbing her toes/feet as I see many babies do. This is also another factor due to her stiffness and lack of trunk strength. So to end the evaluation Erin told us that we did qualify for the Early On program and that she could go either way on recommending Elie for it. She feels she is doing good but that there were a few flags in her development that she saw, as stated above. I told her that we like to be proactive and would prefer to make sure she is on track regularly rather than waiting until there is a bigger problem. She agreed with that and we sign Elie for the program. With that Erin will come to the house once a month for six months to she how she is doing and give us some new things to work on. As stated on our paperwork our function goal for the next few months is to see Eloise roll around and creep on all 4's with developmental steps to reach these goals of pivoting on tummy and getting in and out of sitting. When I asked Erin at what age did you see Eloise's developmental progress at right now she said around 4-4 1/2 months which is on track of how Trey and I see her. So we will continue to work with her and will meet with Erin again on Sept. 20th. I am very happy that we were referred to this program. As a parent you worry about your child's development. Now we have someone to help walk us through the process and make sure we are doing everything we can to get Elie up to speed. Erin stated that they figure it takes one year for every one month a child is premature to catch up to children their own age.

**Side note** So Cecelia had observed part of Elie's evaluation. As we are getting ready to leave the house this afternoon I had Elie in her car seat but not strapped in yet. I was in the other room and came back to the living room to find Elie no longer in her car seat but on her tummy in the middle of the floor with a mirror that we were using with Elie in front on her and Cecelia trying to get her to look into it. I am not sure I want to know how Cecelia got Elie out of her car seat and onto her tummy on the floor (which was about 5 feet from the car seat) but I am happy to see that Cecelia is going to make sure Elie does what Erin told us to work with her on:)