our oldest son has had developmental delays off and on since he was about 18 months old. i say off and on because this is how our life works with him:
realize there is a slight (6 months to a yearish) delay.
wait a few weeks.
see doctor. confirm delay.
put in referral for evaluation or therapy.
continue to work on delay at home while insurance takes its sweet mother effing time to approve referrals.
son very abruptly catches up entirely. sometimes in the course of a day, and i am not exaggerating.
see specialist. child is not delayed.
begin cycle over again in 6 months to a year.
this cycle was on of the large pieces in the pie chart of reasons why i wanted to get rid of our tv's. (i don't think i've posted about that yet. we got rid of our tv's. everyone is alive 9 months later) he needs more room than a lot of kids to let his mind grow.
our younger boy develops very typically. he picks things up more or less as he goes along and then we have occasional cognitive leaps. in contrast, with our oldest we pour information in over and over, repeat it for weeks on end and he shows no sign of comprehension. and then one day, or one week, everything we've been teaching him clicks and comes together and he can do all of it. months of information and work will come to fruition in a matter of days.
it is very frustrating. however, it is also something we are getting gradually more accustomed to and thus it is becoming much less stressful. this past time when the doctor put in the referral, we never went to the specialist. because i knew he would catch up. and i was correct.
granted, i was incredibly worried. as of july he was not prepared to start kindergarten. academically i no longer expect him to be front of the pack, but there were overall concepts, themes and systems that i didn't think his mind quite had a grasp on. lack of mental coordination to some extent i suppose you could call it.
one week before he was slated to start kindergarten, all the pieces joined together, in a matter of days. suddenly he was pretending to read, tracking his finger along with the words and making up the story based on the pictures (we have been working on this seriously since march. MARCH), he was paying attention to his brother's needs and helping us accommodate them, following directions, staying on one task for more than 5 minutes. he learned to swim and sound out SOME letters and began figuring out how to identify the starting letter of a word by the sound it makes. all of this happened, and more, in about 4 days.
hurry up and wait.
in the past 2 weeks or so both boys figured out how to swim (though the little guy can only swim with one breath. he hasn't figured out how to pop his head up, tread water and get another breath. that'll come!), the big guy has figured out diving and can swim the length of a pool. wild.
note the coloring on the wall behind him. THANKS, KIDS!
and our chickens laid their first egg
it's super tiny for now. they get bigger as the chicken figures its life out
hurry up and wait. for the rest of our lives, it would seem.
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