Writing Evaluation

The Big Boy Writing And Other Occupational Therapy Evaluation Updates:
That’s a long section title, maybe I could have come up with something snappier or more succinct but a long day coupled with a migraine headache and I’m all out of clever right now.

My daughter had the whole eye thing happen last year so we were worried she might need some professional help.  We met our now favorite play therapist and have been ever so happy to have her sage advice and guidance for my daughter and us as parents.   What we didn’t expect was to have a need to get some help for my son, but after understanding the complexity of things in play coupled with our ignorance about how the minds of children both develop and work, we have happily welcomed all the help we can get.

I’m going to cut to the end and say that aside from my daughter’s vision, nothing else seems to be a long-term, unfixable, catastrophic problem.   Hopefully her eyesight won’t be either, but it’s good to at least report the rest of our family issues are minor and easily addressed in comparison.

My son’s teachers suggested we look into some occupational therapy for him for two main reasons.  The first was he was struggling with his writing and was going to fall behind if he didn’t get some help at the pace he was going.   Second, he was having some issues controlling touching his friends in the classroom, not being able to concentrate and generally not being able to focus on working during classroom time as a result.   Was it sensorial?   They didn’t know but they knew someone who could evaluate him and help and she was already helping other students in their classroom.

Bethany, the OT specialist, observed our son a few days later and emailed us saying she could evaluate him, saying she saw an immature grasp and had observed the behavioral points his teachers had noticed during her other visits.   The only problem was, she was booked for months.    Once we got on her schedule—likely after school was out for the summer—we’d have a reserved time slot, only it was going to take a bit.

So we waited.    We heard from other parents who said, “oh yes, you should wait for Bethany, she helped <insert name of their cute child here> so much.”   In the meantime we had our son start seeing out play therapist, Dhruti, and found out he doesn’t have sensorial issues, he has self-image issues, compartmentalization issues and inexperienced parent issues.  We started working on those points and have been seeing good progress

I titled the post “Writing Evaluation” because that’s what we thought the bulk of what Bethany would be doing with our son after she evaluated him.   In the meantime we had him work on pencil grasp, writing and drawing and saw him improve quickly.   Then, this week he was finally officially evaluated by Bethany.   She talked to me while she had him do several things to determine if he had sensorial issues.    I can tell you this: when your child chooses the shaving cream work from all the toys in the the closet and then sprays it all over the mirror, wiping it all over himself in the process, you can be fairly certain he doesn’t have sensorial concerns.  

She did some neurological tests that looked like games to him and had him do some drawing and writing.  She saw his level of energy and said there were several children in his classroom that had similar issues “self-regulating”.    Her explanation was years ago we didn’t teach children how to calm themselves, get their energy out or prepare to do calm or quiet work because we weren’t as academically focused as we are today.   Self-regulation was a skill we typically figured our for ourselves when we got to college and had no choice but to find a solution when we had to cram for a test or write a paper.

She said her work with my son would be a combination of helping him know how he was feeling and what he could do to change his mental state.   On the whole writing front, she said he didn’t look to have any problems such as weakness or neurological issues and she thought he’d be able to catch up easily.

So basically no bad news, just things to work on and we have someone who can help us get there.   Bethany thought the work we were doing with Dhruti on the emotional side was a perfect division across their expertise the each had.    My son is already excited about writing.   Today we discovered that Lego and Nexo (two words he likes) have two of the same letters.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   We were in the car the other day talking about where we’ve lived.   My son lived in our prior house for one week before we moved to our current house.   My daughter wanted to know where she was.   We told her when we lived in the prior house she was just an egg to which my daughter replied, “what in the heck?”   My son jumped in, saying, “yeah, in Mommy’s belly.”  My daughter was now more alarmed, saying, “you mean where the food is?!”   She decided it was all okay though when my husband replied, “close to there, but in a different spot.”