Occupational Therapy for toddlers

Hi Juno

My son is 2 years and 2 months and when I took him for an assessment at 2 years, they told me he was on the level of a 1 year old. He has been going for speech therapy, but lost interest very quickly and I have now been recommended to go to an educational psychologist and a neurologist for further assessment since it seems that his "verbal IQ" is far below his "non-verbal IQ". (I made appointments, but have to wait 2 and 4 months respectively to get them!)

Over the last few months I have read up a LOT about these kinds of issues and I have learned 2 crucial things:

1. Trust your instinct! A mother really does know! I have been suspecting for months that my child's speech is not on par with other kids his age. However lots of people told me that boys and kids who learn more than one language always take longer, that other kids they know had the same problem, etc., so I didn't do anything about it sooner.
2. NEVER WAIT AND SEE if things will improve by itself! It is like cancer, the sooner it is diagnosed, the sooner it can be treated and the better your chances of healing are! You can not be overly paranoid in this respect; if you suspect your child has ANY problem, take him/her for assessments immediately!

HI ladies

Reading this thread with great interest...

May i ask what signs you all picked up on exactly?

Trust your instincts. People told me I was over reacting that my son was non verbal at 19 months. Everyone said boys talk later etc. But what no one noticed is he did not babble, made no eye contact and didnt respond to his name. The assessment put him at 6 months old for communication.

After a month of intensive therapy there was a huge improvement!!

GW that must be difficult for your sister knowing that an intervention could have possibly sorted it out years ago. I never want to be in that position.

Thanks for sharing Rakker. I have personally have never had a problem with taking my son to an OT. In fact it is something I have been wanting to do for over a year now.

When I say my DH is against it let me just say that we have nearly come to blows over this! I eventually managed to drag him to the pre-assessment interview and he is feeling marginally better about it and has agreed to do it. I agree that it can do no harm.

The OT's approach is 2 shorter sessions plus a session observing him at school (play group) which I think sounds quite thorough.

Funnily enought that what you mention are a couple of things I'm getting that there are issues with - balance, motor skills.

Frankly I'm pretty sure we could all benefit from some OT My balance for example is not particularly good BUT it does not prevent me from functioning optimally. If I haven't reached my full potential it is not because I don't have the ability to do so. So I see it as checking to see that all the building blocks are in place so that he can reach his full potential. And not that there is something "wrong" per se.

At the moment I share my son's frustration which is evident everyday because we either can't understand what he wants from us or he can't do something that he knows he should be able to do. At least there are no issues socially or emtionally for which he gets full marks.

I'lll let you know how it went and whether anything was picked up.

Hope you are in the mood for reading...

Go for the assessment. It can do absolutely no harm. I understand your husband taking it badly, because I also went through the emotions of realizing something is "wrong". "Wrong" really meaning that my son needs a bit of extra help. If you compare him to other 3 year olds and if the difference in development is obvious, he probably needs a bit of help. If the teacher, who sees the other kids and can compare, says he might need OT, she might just be right.

Go for the OT assessment (I'll tell you more about my son's assessment now), and also go for an assessment at a speech therapist for the talking that you said is behind. Trust me, at some stage you have gone through the "grieving" process and when you see the improvement with therapy, you will be just too glad that you didn't just leave it.

Alexander is very intelligent (I know I know, we all say that) and his speech and language development has always been waaaay ahead of that of his peers. So you can imagine the shock when I saw his pictures compared to those of his class mates, his looking like that of a much younger child. I knew he had a balance problem and I always thought he looked a bit awkward when he ran, almost like it's more effort for him. And you know what, it broke my heart to think that my (highly sensitive) child is struggling. So I made the OT assessment appointment, went for a pre-assessment interview (just me) and had to complete 2 forms, one being a questionnaire about his sensory stuff.

Then the 4 hour assessment took place and after that I went for the feedback. It is amazing how they told me that my gut feeling was right all along. In short, his proprioception and vestibular sensory systems are not firing the way they are supposed to. It affects his pencil grip, his body posture, the way he cuts, and basically the way he does all his motor planning. He started with therapy (really fun type of therapy) and I can already see the improvement after 3 sessions.

I am so glad I took him. I also took him for an assessment at a play therapists after an incident at school and he also improved so much after a few sessions. What I am getting at is this: at this age (Alexander just turned 4) the kids who need help need only a little help and they really progress fast. If you wait, he might need more help and more time to progress.

Good luck and let us know how it went.

If I were you I would take him. I have no idea if your teachers have reason to be worried, maybe it is no big deal. But if I look at my sisters son who is now 10 years old and the learning problems that have submerged now and how difficult it is now to rectify problems that originated in pre-school, I would be on the safe side and just check it out. Things like not crawling at the right age and certain "concepts" he didn't grasp at a certain age, eyetests that were not acurate where he needed glasses etc.

I thing it is quite a balancing act with regards to your child's development. You don't want to go overboard and suspect a problem behind every bush, however one can't be too blase about things either, believing that "it is probably nothing".

My sister told me now that he went for all tests possible to determine the cause of his learning problems (his IQ was not the problem). As all the info emerged as to what is contributing to the problems she said that she did notice these things when he was younger but just thought it will sort itself out as children don't learn at the same pace and his teachers at school told her to stop worrying. She said that she didn't trust her gut instinct as she suspected for one that the eye test that they performed were not accurate when they said that his eyesight was fine.

Anyway, I think it is best to trust your gut instinct and get a good second opinion from a professional.

Hope all is fine and works out well. xx

Anybody had their toddler (mine is just 3) at an OT? What can I expect?

We have been advised my my son's nursery school teacher and Monkinastix teacher that he is developmentally not on par with his peers He is a very outgoing child who is popular with the other kids according to his teacher. It is just on the physical milestones that he is lagging including talking. He is however doing really well at swimming lessons funnily enough.

We went to chat to an OT and have decided to have an assessment done. From what I could tell, he is on the right path but just on the slow side. So the question becomes one of do we allow him to develop in his own time risking missing a possible very real functional problem or do we just get it over and done with. My husband is also taking this all SO badly..