Making progress

Charlotte is a social butterfly these days.  Gone are the days of stranger danger, being a loner, and not wanting to interact or cuddle with others.  She loves hugging and kissing everyone, she says hi to everyone when we go to the store (or anywhere else), she seeks little friends at the park and gym, and warms up quickly to strangers.  I love seeing how much she is blossoming!

Her speech is really improving.  She now puts 2 words together (bye baby, hi Scout), and probably has about 40 words.  She is beginning to choose language over tantrums and yelling.  She is working on her patience still, but she is much better at calming herself down.  She still really struggles with transitions, and doesn’t seem to understand tense (future or past) and only lives right now.  This makes it difficult to warn her of what is coming next or to remind her what already happened.

Her therapists are so impressed with her progress and they all say that they absolutely adore having her as a ‘student’.  They have recently switched her to a peer setting, where it’s more classroom type of therapy rather than one on one.  We all noticed that she mimics other children very well, and because she is more social she seems to make faster progress in social situations.  She especially loves ‘music class’ where they follow directions, sing, do hand motions, dance and share with other children.

To help with transitions both at therapy and home, we are going to make her a picture schedule board.  These are often used for autistic children or other children who have behavioral delays.  This helps them have ‘control’ over their schedule, and be able to predict what happens next.  We also have to come up with a reward system for things like sitting nicely at dinner, sharing with her brother, following directions.  I think we might do a sticker chart and then reward off of earning a certain number of stickers.  If you have other reward ideas I’d love to hear them!

Charlotte is becoming much, much stronger.  She grips on with her legs when we hold her, she is able to take stairs foot to foot for the entire flight up our home stairs, and she is starting to be able to hold her own when fighting for toys.  She has an amazing arm and is fairly accurate with her throwing.

The one physical area she still has to work on his ‘self safety/preservation’.  For an average person (including babies and toddlers), if they were to trip and fall or if danger was approaching them, they would try to protect themselves with their arms.  Charlotte however seems oblivious to needing to protect herself, it’s just not a natural reflex for her.  This is dangerous because when she trips and falls, she doesn’t try at all to break her fall with her arms or hands, and usually bangs her face or head pretty hard.  We do exercises at home that get her to practice holding herself up with her arms as well as strengthening her arm and hand muscles.

Charlotte still loves singing and dancing.  Using sign language and some humming she can ask for a variety of songs to be sung.  She will do almost all of the hand motions and will stay completely focused.  She loves reading and looking at books and pictures.  She knows every page of her favorite stories and when Chris tries to fool her by pretending to read another book, she laughs and covers his mouth.  She loves coloring and painting as well.

She can recognize many letters and even understands that the word mommy has an m (or three) in it.  When she sees the letter m, she says ‘momma!’.  She practices ‘writing’ and you will see her scribble and the declare ‘dah-ee!’, ‘tout!’, ‘momma!’, or ‘tee’ (somehow Tooter got shortened to Tee…she still calls herself Shot, but Cooper calls her Shaw-yotte now).  It is super cute.