I know that when Liam was younger, I was always interested in how kids older than him were developing.  Kids with Down syndrome that is, not those with 46, because we all know that it is in no way fair to compare a kid with Down syndrome to a kid who is "typically" developing.

Liam's last IFSP eval was a few weeks ago.  Here are the results.

Physical/Gross Motor

Age Range: 15-17 months

Strengths: Takes steps on own, stands from floor, stands alone

Needs/Next Steps: Walk independently

Physical/Fine Motor

Age Range: 22-24 months

Strengths: Stacks 6 cubes, places pieces in puzzle, puts peg in pegboard

Needs/Next Steps: String beads

Cognitive/Problem Solving

Age Range: 24-28 months

Strengths: Recognizes familiar adult in photo, understands action verbs, completes 4+ piece puzzle

*Knows upper and lower case letters

Needs/Next Steps: Match identical pictures

*This was added later because the IFSP eval doesn't ask for this skill.  It's considered in the 3-4 year age range.

Communication/Language

Age Range: 24-30 months

Strengths: Names 8 pictures, repeats words and sounds, uses over 50 words

Needs/Next Steps: 3 word sentences

Personal/Social & Emotional

Age Range: 24-30 months

Strengths: Has temper tantrums, shows independence, experiments with adult activities

Needs/Next Steps: Obeys simple rules

Adaptive/Self Help

Age Range: 24-30 months

Strengths: Has food preferences, wipes nose, washes hands

Needs/Next Steps: Hold spoon palm up

There you have it.  Liam was 32 months when the eval was done.  You can see his obvious weakness with the gross motor skills and his obvious strengths.  Some of the needs/next steps he's already starting to do.  He has several 3 word sentences.  Things like "I get it.", "There it goes.", "No mawmaw today."  He can obey some simple rules if he decides he wants to, but it's still a developing skill.

We wrote the goals for the last 4 months of EI.  They include walking, self-feeding with a spoon, and matching pictures and colors.  The spoon thing.  Sigh.  He can feed himself.  He doesn't.  It's a combination of not wanting to and not so hot spoon skills.

We met with our school district last week.  It went pretty well.  Liam qualifies for services.  She wouldn't specify if he qualified for classroom services or itinerant services, but she did talk about riding the bus and such so I'm imagining it's classroom services.  I imagine she can't give that information right away because everything has to go through the proper channels.  She was quite impressed with his language.  She kind of assumed that he had very little verbal skills but she soon learned that the kid can talk and can talk fairly well. She also wanted to know how he learned his letters, if we did anything special to teach him. (As an aside, no we didn't.  We read to him a lot.  We did some Love & Learning videos.  But we didn't make it a big deal.  He was the one who showed us that he was learning them on his own.  We followed his lead.) Our next meeting will be the full MFE sometime in October.  

I cannot believe that we're discussing school.  Real live school with backpacks, chalkboards, and buses.  Where did the time go?  My boy will be three in four short months.  My baby will be 8 months tomorrow.  Seriously, time?  You need to stop it.  Stop moving so fast.