Assessments

Owen had his annual assessment for TEIS this week. He's continually assessed throughout the year, but this was the official assessment for his annual review where we set goals and update paperwork. To do this, they basically ask me a lot of questions about what he's doing and based on those answers they determine his "developmental age" for specific areas. I'll spare most of the details here, but I will say that God is good! In the Communicative Development (speech and language) area, he is at 16-18 months for receptive and 14-16 months for expressive (our EI tells me "everything has to go in before it can come out" so receptive is usually ahead of expressive). He just turned 16 months so that seems to me that he's right on target. It's really unbelievable to think that he's developing in speech and language just as well as any other kid. I can't really express how thankful I am for newborn hearing screenings and early intervention. I can only imagine where we would be without them now and down the road.

All that is to remind myself that he is doing great. Lately, it's hard for me to overlook the fact that he's 16 months and not walking! Not that it's unheard of, but I'm ready for him to walk! It's strange to think that with everything we've had thrown at us over the past 16 months, his gross motor skills would be the area where he lags behind. A year ago I wouldn't have believed it if someone had told me that Owen would be saying 15 words at this point and that my biggest concern would be that he is not walking. He was a late crawler, too, and even then he did a funny army crawl for a long time before he was up on hands and knees. It's just the way he is and I know he'll walk eventually. Hopefully by the time summer rolls around! It will make playing outside so much easier! But, until then, I'll be satisfied knowing that his language development is right on track and he's doing fine.