As many of you already know, Julian gets therapies (physical, occupational and speech) through the state’s Early Intervention (EI) program to help with his development. He has a primary point of contact through the Woburn Thom Mystic Valley EI center who comes every week to our home to check in.
Recently we’ve been chatting about how to best support Julian’s needs and we had the idea that she might want to start visiting him at daycare instead of at home because he is ready to work on other areas of his play and socialization with his peers.
The physical and occupational therapists already visit him at daycare when they are in the gross motor room and during eating/fine motor activity time respectively.
So I thought I’d share the goals that we wrote down for Julian and that my EI contact said she will work on with Julian’s awesome daycare teachers to support them in supporting Julian!
1) Learn to follow instructions consistently
e.g. “sit down” “stand up” “come over here and wash your hands” “put the blocks in” “help put away your toys”.
observations: Julian understands what is needed of him….and about half the time follows instructions – but he needs to be given the necessary time to digest and respond to requests. I notice that the teachers move quickly – for example he can definitely put something “in” when asked but he needs like an extra 10 seconds and maybe 2-3 prompts and the teachers just grab the item from him sometimes instead of waiting.
2) Learn to sit with the group and engage with one activity.
Many other kids sit down and listen when a book is read in a group setting. A few of the kids still don’t – they are not even 2 years old mind you – but Julian pretty consistently doesn’t sit and listen when it is clearly “the” activity going on at the moment. He goes to get his own books and reads them on his own or goes to play with something else.
3) Learn to know what to do and handle emotions when bumped or hit
Julian is very sensitive to others when they get too close to him, and he often starts crying if he is accidentally or purposefully bumped into. Now that he has started walking, I think this will help him as I think a lot of the kids towering over him has been a little intimidating – but he is also very sensitive to when others are upset or make really loud startling noises. We can work on having him adjust to this activity and also teach him strategies for if he doesn’t like how someone else has touched him by signing “no”, etc. etc.
4) Get in and out of chair on his own at the table now that he is walking
He might need some 1:1 assistance with this to learn how to push his hands back from the chair. He knows how to push his chair in. I can perhaps ask our physical therapist to come during lunch time one time to work on this with him as he learns new things now that he is walking more!!
5) Work with the teachers specifically on how we are encouraging language development, and teach them specific strategies to illicit spoken words
I still owe everyone photos of Julian in his new big boy room/bed (the transition is going so awesome…) and I will try to download a few more photos of him at daycare to share – I have misplaced the password for their site where they share photos. Oopsie.
Take care all!
Gretchen
