Screening Results - Always interesting

Each year, Missouri’s Parents as Teachers (PAT) program offers a free screening to each child enrolled in the program.  Michael’s screening was Monday.  This was the first year he got the “preschool” screening rather than the toddler developmental screening.  Our PAT educator, Ms. S., came to our house to do the screening.  She worked with Michael independently at the kitchen table while I kept Ava busy in the playroom.  The screening probably took about half an hour.  To be honest, I wasn’t paying close attention to the time so I’m not completely sure.  Ms. S. told me that they don’t switch over to the preschool screening until the child is at least 3 years, 3 months old so Michael just made the cutoff to use the higher level screening. 

The screening has three parts:  a language section, a concepts section, and a motor section.  This particular screening is used with 3, 4, 5, and 6 year old children.  In fact, they’ll use the exact same form for the next two years so we’ll be able to track his progress from year to year.  The language section covers personal data (do they know their name, etc.), a basic articulation screening, matching actions to objects, letters and sounds skills, rhyming, and simple problem solving.  The concepts section covers body parts, colors, counting, shapes, positions (under, beside, etc.), and concepts (longest, full, cold, etc.).  The motor section covers both gross motor skills (catching, jumping, hopping, etc.) and fine motor skills (building with small blocks, cutting, copying symbols, etc.).

So, Michael did an amazing job on the language and concepts sections.  He performed at the 4, 5, and even 6 year old level on the questions on these sections.  I am so proud of him.  I knew he was a smart kid, but wow!  It’s always nice to have independent confirmation. 

In the motor section we saw an entirely different picture.  He pretty much performed at the under three level or barely qualified at the three year old level for these skills.  It’s strange.  He can use a computer mouse completely independently.  He can double click, single click, and move it to exactly where he wants it.  He can build complex structures with duplos and the smaller legos.  He can string beads onto a pipe cleaner.  And yet he holds crayons and pencils in his fist like he’s trying to stab someone with them.  He still doesn’t show consistent hand dominance.  Sometimes he’ll use the right and other times the left.  He isn’t interested in coloring for more than 2-3 minutes at a time perhaps because he finds it difficult.  He does like to cut paper, but we don’t do it often and so he isn’t very precise.  Perhaps I need to work art into our weekly schedule a little more often.   And as far as gross motor is concerned I guess we need to work more on balance and catching.  Hopefully spring will provide more opportunity to get outdoors and play physically some more.  He also cannot pedal a tricycle yet.

I suppose, as I parent I do the things I like most.  So we do a lot of singing, reading, talking, and playing with toys like legos, marble runs, trains, and puzzles.  We don’t do as much art and physical play.  I need to branch out more so that my children will have a more balanced skill set.   

So, overall I thought the screening was great.  It showed me that Michael is a smart little boy who has definite areas of strength and I’m so proud of him.  It also showed me that I have an opportunity to focus on some new things that hopefully we will all enjoy while getting to practice some new skills.

Does anyone have suggestions of fun art activities that might work on some of those fine motor skills beyond simple coloring projects?

Look what I made!

First let me say that I am not, by nature, an artistic person.  People who are genuinely creative are mystical beings who are worthy of my admiration.  However, about a year ago I decided to buy a sewing machine.  I didn’t know how to use one.  I bought it almost on a whim.  It’s shocking what curtains cost, really.  I bought a beginner’s sewing book and did little projects like making a pincushion and a sewing machine cover.  My first major project was the curtains for Ava’s room.  I was quite pleased with myself actually given that I hadn’t touched a sewing machine since one small unit in high school home economics.  I don’t make particularly beautiful things, but I like the idea of making practical ones.  Here are my curtains (see picture – I made the curtains, not the valance).

Not so long ago we converted Ava’s crib to its toddler bed form.  She was ready.  We did it spontaneously though, so I hadn’t bought any “big girl” bedding.  We still made it up just like her crib with her crib sheets.  She sleeps in it holding her stuffed kitties and covered by one of her baby blankets.  A couple of days ago I decided I’d try to sew a pillow for her.

I dug around in the box of old baby clothes and found a couple of old baby dresses.  I cut them up for the material.  I shredded all the scraps that were left over and a bunch of other scraps left over from other projects for filling.  The scraps are mostly fleece so the stuffing is really soft and fluffy.  I serged the edges of the material together leaving a small gap so that it could be filled.  I turned it inside out, filled it with the cut up scraps of material using a funnel, and hand sewed the gap closed.  Voila – pillow.  Ava loves it!  I finished it just in time for nap.  She grabbed it from my hands and ran upstairs to her room to put it in her bed.  She wouldn’t leave the bed to get dressed.  I had to put her pull-up and pajama bottoms on her in the bed and she didn’t want her usual books and songs.  She just went right to sleep that day.  It was adorable. 

Then I made a second one so that when one set of bedding is in the wash she can use the other one.  I added a border to this one so it looks slightly more fancy than the first one.  The first one is the pink one.  The second one is the purple one.  Ava, of course, won’t touch the second one because it is purple and not pink.  She’s recently decided pink is her favorite color.  And it’s icing on the cake that I did the entire project from stuff I had lying around the house and so it didn’t cost a penny. 

Unexpected Crisis

Saturday night got exciting at about 11pm.  There’s nothing like a “Should we go to the emergency room or not?” situation to fully wake you up.

Ava came down with a cold Thursday morning.  (Somehow that never fails to happen the day –after- you visit the pediatrician for a check up.)  It was just a normal little kid cold: tons of snot, fatigue, crankiness, and a fairly impressive wet cough, but nothing particularly scary.  In fact, I commented Saturday afternoon that things seemed to be getting a bit better because now I was only having to wipe her nose once every half hour instead of once every 5 minutes.  

Just as I was drifting off to sleep at around 11pm Saturday night I hear Ava start to cough and cry and cough and cry.  It went on and on.  We very rarely go into our childrens’ bedrooms at night, but something just seemed off here.  My husband volunteered to go check on her.  Moments later he was back in our bedroom with Ava.  She was wheezing.  The cough was croup and she was having trouble breathing.  That was causing her to panic which just made things worse.  

It was Ava’s first time, but not our first time.  Michael’s colds often end up with croup/wheezing in the middle of the night.   Once it was bad enough that we did end up in the emergency room with him.  We knew what to try first.  We turned on the shower as hot as possible to get the bathroom steamy.  I sat in there with Ava cuddled close to my chest rocking and singing to her.  She was extremely hot.  So hot I didn’t even bother with a thermometer.  We just got a dose of ibuprofen into her as quickly as possible.  She completely freaked out about taking the medicine which made the wheezing worse, which made her panic…  Then I just continued to sit there with her rocking and singing in the warm steamy bathroom while my husband prepped her room. 

He got two humidifiers going and removed her smoke alarm.  Humidifiers trigger our smoke alarms, so if we need the humidifiers we have to pull the smoke alarm down.  This took him a good 20 minutes and in the meantime, the ibuprofen kicked in and the wheezing calmed down and she had almost drifted off.  However, when I stood up to take her back to her room, the wheezing instantly came back.  By the time I was in the armchair in her room I was practically starting over.  Twenty minutes after that I laid her down in her toddler bed which flared things up again so I crawled in with her.  My presence kept her calm, but it also kept her awake so I slipped out of her bed and sat right next to her waiting to see if the wheezing would stop.   We knew that if she continued to have trouble breathing even while resting, we’d need to go to the ER.  About an hour later it finally faded and I slipped out of her room. 

I finally went to sleep around 3am and was back up with the kids at 7am.  I do not function well on four hours of sleep, so Sunday was a bit of a blur.  I do remember that Ava’s temperature at one point was 102.7.  And she wasn’t nearly as hot as she had been in the middle of the night.  Getting the infant drops into her was predictably difficult again.  The highlight of the day was discovering that they make chewable bubble gum flavored acetaminophen that Ava can now take because she’s two.  I told her it was candy.  She loved it.  Is that wrong?  Technically, I lied, but if I had told her it was medicine she would have refused to try it.  I know her.  She definitely would have refused to try it.  Anyway, hopefully we won’t have any repeats of croup in the middle of the night.  And hopefully this cold will pass soon. 

Of course, I have the cold now.  And my voice is on its way out.   Parenting two little ones is enough of a challenge with a voice.  Without a voice it’s crazy.  And therapy will pretty much be out until my voice is back.  Life is always interesting.