Early Intervention Evaluation

The Twins are 39 Weeks and 6 Days

Today was the big day. Two surprisingly pleasant, knowledgeable women from the Early Intervention program came over today to evaluate the boys. One is a physical therapist and another is a developmental specialist. I think that they got a good feel for the boys’ personalities and where they are developmentally. They told me that we have some good looking babies and they see a lot of babies! Here is a summary of the results:

J-Man
J-Man is not eligible for services and falls within the 7-9 month range for the areas evaluated. Not a surprise but great to hear nonetheless. He’s described as an “active and social 9 month old”. They also think that he’ll be crawling very soon and we can encourage him by bending his knees when he’s on the floor (which we’ve been doing). He’s “very motivated and strong”. His emerging fine motor skill is reaching across his midline (picking up an object on his left with his right hand and vice versa).

His communication skills are slightly behind and on par with a 6-7 month old. He just started saying “ba” and should be babbling more. He is not consistently responding to his name and should begin to show understanding of simple common words without the use of a visual cue. Increased verbal play and recognition of objects is needed.

G-Dawg
Little G is eligible for services and is 25% behind in social and gross motor skills. He is described as “alert and easygoing”. They said that it was unusual that he didn’t display social reciprocity or maintain eye contact, however they weren’t too concerned about it. They’ve seen children with neurological problems and their intuition was that he’s fine but just needs to catch up. It’s best to try to help him along and encourage him to be more active early on in life, but they think that eventually he would catch up on his own. G-Dawg was not given an age level/range for the areas evaluated.

His emerging skills include chasing a toy, sitting independently, and reaching further out. He has a decreased awareness of his arms (and body awareness in general) and does not know how to use them. This is why he does not roll competently or reach his arms out when in the wheelbarrow position.

G-Dawg looks at adult’s faces and does not yet recognize familiar vs. unfamiliar people as far as I can tell. Everyone always comments on how happy he is and how he doesn’t get stranger anxiety. Those are nice traits to have but they concern me. He doesn’t respond to his name yet and needs to increase his back and forth eye contact and communication, hence why he is 25% behind in social skills. One suggestion was to not give G-Dawg an object or food until he makes eye contact. That could result in a very fussy G-Dawg!

Apparently a 4 month old should have 81 minutes of tummy time a day. That’s practically the entirety of their wake time. Our neighbors with twins are occupational and physical therapists. No wonder I always see their boys on their tummies.

G-Dawg needs to be put on his tummy constantly. We already put him on his tummy often and it’s a hard thing to do because he gets so upset and worked up. On top of that, there’s his increasing needy brother to take care of so it’s hard to give G-Dawg the attention that he deserves. It’s all too easy to let G-Dawg sit or lay around and entertain himself with a toy or teether.

We should also put G-Dawg in the wheelbarrow position so that he learns to reach his arms out against the ground. Other suggestions include having him sit with his legs apart and leaning him to each side, massaging his hands, and showing both of them motions that involve two hands, such as clapping, playing the itsy bitsy spider, etc. We need to focus a bit more on his right arm/hand because he seems to favor his left arm. The physical therapist didn’t advocate using the exercise ball, which we have blown up at our neighbor’s suggestion.

The living room is cleared out now. No coffee table, just the rug. We may just go buy those cushioned tiles to lay on the floor. They will help J-Man with his crawling. A woman at the last meetup had the tiles and one of the 4 month olds was scooting!

Both Boys
There are several areas for which both boys need to develop skills. They both should begin to self feed with their fingers, reach out to have us pick them up, cover their faces to play peek-a-boo, show recognition of simple words, respond to their names, and increase verbal play and recognition of objects.

No exersaucer for both boys. J-Man can go back to using it once he's crawling. Too bad, it's an easy way to occupy him for 10 or 15 minutes.

It looks like we have a lot of work to do. Scratch that, us and the nanny have a lot of work to do. She thinks that G-Dawg is on his own schedule, which may be true, but I want him to have all the help that he can get. It worries me that Hubby and I are not there every second of the day to make sure that the boys are being interacted with properly. I feel like we’re leaving their development up to the nanny since she spends the most time with them. It’s a frustrating, helpless feeling, and I don’t think that putting the boys in day care is going to make things any better. Or maybe it would because the people that work there are so experienced. Who knows?

My aunt has offered to come over once a week to work with G-Dawg. She surprised me by telling me that she worked with babies years ago (I forget in what capacity). She’s also offered to babysit this upcoming Saturday which would be fantastic (Hubby and I haven’t been out together alone in a LONG time) but we’re having a belated “holiday” dinner with Hubby’s family. It looks like his aunt has finally gotten over her distaste for me after my “outburst” about her trying for a girl comments. Oh, and my aunt has said that she’d watch the boys overnight at some point in the near future. I’ll believe it when I see it!!!