We had our evaluation at Early Support Services on Tuesday at 2:00 P.M., with Gail and Denise. The evaluation itself lasted 40 minutes, and I was truly impressed with how well the PT (Gail) and SLP (speech language pathologist, Denise) interacted and played with Henry. While one "played" with him and asked him to do certain tasks, the other marked the results down on their little "scorecard." Some notable tasks that Henry could complete included:
-feeding a babydoll with a spoon and bottle, after modeled by Gail
-putting blocks back into a container, after being asked
-finding the top to the container when asked
-finding a tiny wind-up bug after it is hidden under a cloth
-taking a few unassisted steps (we did this at home, too!)
-tracking a race car after it was hidden under a cup, the cup was moved, and he was asked which cup it was under, when presented with 2 cups (I was impressed with this!)
-when given a closed container of bubbles, he brought it over to Jordan and gave it to Jordan, his way of asking for help
-showing self-pride when he did something good (this was a plus on the eval!)
-placing a Cheerio into a bottle
-getting Cheerios out of a bottle
-banging 2 objects together (although he pretended like he didn't know how to do this, he is quite the expert as he bangs objects together at home all.the.time)
Henry's main areas of "delay" were in fine motor skills and speech/language development. His social/emotional development was right on track, if not exceeding his age, and his gross-motor was right on target. Unfortunately, about 50% of the tasks under the fine motor section assume that he can stack tiny blocks, and he is just not a stacker yet, he is more of a destroyer (hates those tall towers!). And, they concluded that his speech/language development was in the 8-10mos range, and where as he is almost 17 months, he is deemed eligible for services.
After (kindly) asking for some privacy to talk this decision over on whether to enroll now, later, or at all, Jordan and I decided to enroll Henry into the program right then and there (why make another trip back) - we will have a provider come to our house (awesome) for free (even better) once a week. I hope we can schedule it late enough in the day so that I can make it home for work, for part, if not all, of the sessions. Henry will have the same provider every week. I am really looking forward to this!
As parents, we will learn more activities and ways to support Henry's development, and Henry will get great one-on-one time with a teacher. The sessions should start in mid-June.
I will update Henry's progress as it comes.
Thanks for reading :) Cheers!
