Thursday, September 17, 2009

Thursday, September 17, 2009 - Update

First, I wanted to say Happy Birthday to my niece, Rebekah, who is turning 7 today!!! I hope you had a wonderful birthday!

We met with Olivia's developmental pediatrician today. All in all, it was a good visit. Olivia is almost age appropriate in gross motor and language. She is, however, significantly delayed in her fine motor skills. We have known that for some time. Olivia does not like to be constrained (especially her hands) and be forced to do things. One of the suggestions to help with her fine motor skills is to do hand over hand and "force" her to go through the motions. This doesn't work because she gets increasingly upset and will no longer concentrate on the task at hand. Olivia was unable to stack blocks, put a peg in a peg board, string a bead or color. She has stacked blocks and rings at home, but not consistently. She is very timid when she touches things and doesn't use the force that's needed. It's not that she doesn't know how to do things, it's just that she doesn't use enough force. Of course, I had to tell them that she is trying to potty train herself. It's amazing because I wasn't going to work on that for another 6 months, but she goes in the potty about 2-3 times each day. It's almost instinctual for her. She doesn't even need any type of reward because it's as if using the potty is its own reward.

Anyway, I hope to get her more occupational therapy in order to address these concerns. I still don't know how to help her with her sensory issues and it's a little frustrating for me.

3 comments:

23 weekers said...

Glad to hear she had such a good appt. Kinnick has TERRIBLE sensory issues. We bought a sensory table and we can change things out in the table. It's just a sand and water table by Step 2, but works nice for just about anything. You can even put it on the deck and then spray it down if you need to. We've been putting different kinds of bean in the table - chick peas seems to be the favorite. Kinnick actually goes to the table by herself now and throws (yes, throws) the peas all over the place. We just keep picking them back up. I'm just happy she is going to the table and putting her hands in the peas on her own - no pressure from us. We were also told to bury things in the beans/peas. Then let her find them. She doesn't like this one yet, but she can't see, so I think that takes a lot of the fun out of it.

Laura said...

How is Olivia doing? And thank you for saying happy birthday to Rebekah. (Julia)
Thank you for saying my name. (Rebekah)
PS For the party we have cool flooring. (Julia)

Anonymous said...

I have a 2 year old niece who has PDD and also has sensory issues. We were told to make sure to get an occupational therapist who specializes in sensory therapy. We use ECI here in Houston, TX and we get free therapy about twice a week since we could not afford it. We also ordered a Spio suit which gives pressure in all the right places and she loves it. You can check it out at www.spioworks.com