We took Lillie for her first developmental evaluation yesterday. Two therapists (one speech, one occupational) played with her for about an hour. Lillie did great and we found out she is not significantly delayed in any area (we kind of figured that already). She is "at risk" for becoming delayed in a couple of areas where she didn't score quite as high.
Her "Receptive Communication" skills were a little low. We know she can hear, but she isn't making the connection between sound and meaning yet, she isn't "looking for the source of the sound." They want us to get her hearing checked to rule out a physical hearing problem. The other area she had a lower score in was "Adaptive Self-care"...she got a lower score here partly because she isn't eating solids yet. The therapists said that's not really fair because she is getting the best nutrition possible and that shouldn't count against her, but it sort of does on the test (standardized testing is already affecting her). Since she does have a "week latch" the therapist gave me some exercies to do to strengthen her face muscles and get her ready for the spoon. She also taught me the correct way to introduce the spoon so we don't form bad habits from the start.
Not surprisingly Lillie scored very high on social skills, particularly adult interaction. She loves attention and she prefers people over toys!
She was within normal limits in every other area. Her "Fine Motor skills" scored on the low end of normal, and the therapists recommended occupational therapy once a week to help with fine motor skills and hearing skills. If we lived anywhere else, a therapist would come to our house for this. But they have no home-bound occupational therapist for Sumter County!! They have one Sumter County therapist, but apparently she isn't occupational, not sure what she is. So we don't know yet how far we'll have to go. We should know in a couple of weeks. I will be placing another call to the "boss" of the therapists though and seeing if I can pull some strings (we're friends with her parents and I spoke with her before the evaluation). Not likely, but I'm gonna try.
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Sounds like you are off to a good start! Are you offering her chin support to help her latch ... that might help. Curious to hear what they say is "proper" use of the spoon. At a Talk Tools workshop, I was taught to bring it to the mouth sideways, so that the tip and arm of the spoon hit the corners of her mouth, giving her the instinct to close completely on her spoon and pull the food from it rather than us scraping the food off in their mouth. Does that make sense? LOL
Yes, she told us don't "dump and scrape." Don't scrape food off using the roof of the mouth. Instead, put it in her mouth and slightly push down to give her that instinct to close on the spoon. She didn't say anything about coming from the side, but that does make sense.
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