Discharged from PT!

After a year and lots of hard work, C was discharged from physical therapy today! A year ago, when he started weekly sessions, it was determined that he was a little over 25% delayed in gross motor skills. While we knew it would just take some time to catch him up, the end goal seemed so far away.

At 11 months, he could not sit himself up, pull to standing, or crawl.  Now, at 23 months he is completely caught up with his age group and is walking, starting to run, trying to jump, doing stairs, climbing, spinning, and walking backwards. Its amazing and we couldn't have done it alone.

When you are evaluated by Early Intervention and its determined that the child qualifies for services, a call is put out to therapists in the area that can help. Someone who can work with the schedule needed responds and you start sessions. We definitely lucked out and got hooked up with a wonderful woman named Stephanie who came almost every week for an entire year to work with C. It takes a special person to be a physical therapist and she was it - kind, patient, reassuring, and helped us celebrate every little milestone. It was so bittersweet to say good bye to her today knowing we'd have no more sessions. C was abnormally upset when she left as if he knew that was it. C adored her and I truly hope that's not the last we see of each other.

So here we are - no more PT! The rest of his evaluation yielded interesting results - some surprising and others not so surprising. Advanced scores in social/emotional? Not so surprising for my social, flirty little boy. A 36% delay in adaptive skills, however, was not what we were expecting. While C is an excellent eater, he has no interest and almost an aversion to independence with regards to hygiene and dressing himself. In general, this isn't a cause for alarm, but it will make potty training MUCH more difficult/delayed without additional help. We'll be seeing an occupational therapist once or twice to get some tips on how we can help him and monitor his development in this area. While we aren't in a rush to potty train, its always best to be as prepared as we can.

Though today was a bittersweet day, its a big one in C's milestone book. I've said it before and will say it again, if you ever have doubts or questions about your child's development, check out your local Early Intervention (or equivalent) for an evaluation. Its free, its easy, and gives you peace of mind. It has been a wonderful experience for us and I won't soon forget all we've learned.