graduation day
Lijah had his last early intervention visit this morning (at 7:15 it was certainly early intervention). A few weeks ago he had his annual re-evaluation and it turns out he can do all the things—especially talk, which was a little bit of a surprise to us. When you're following a pair of brothers who were saying full sentences before 18 months you've maybe got some unrealistic expectations to live up to. But the professionals know better, and they told us that he didn't need any more help from them. Which is good, I suppose; though you sure can get used to someone coming by your house once a week with a bag full of toys!
It seems like the biggest thing with Lijah is that he wanted more direct instruction in lots of areas than we had been giving him. I guess there were some distractions that kept us from paying as much attention to him as we should have? But even back when he was just a little guy trying to learn to sit up, he caught on super quick once the developmental specialist showed him how it was done. Then his PT taught him how to walk, and he learned to wave it play group... See, it does take a village: a village of professionals! We're very grateful.
When we first started posting about early intervention, we ran into angry objections from a (distant) friend who worried we were forever stigmatizing our little guy be revealing that he needed help. We never would have thought of that: our neighborhood pals are uniformly pro-intervention, and all happily shared their positive stories with us as we waited (not very long) for Lijah to get services. Which I think is how it should be. It's a weakness to not be able to accept help, and we feel only fortunate to have been in a position to be helped by the fine folks at Minute Man Arc. And it wasn't Lijah's problem anyways, it was ours! I feel like it would be wrong not to share our experience: believing that intervention is in any way stigmatizing will only keep people from getting the services they need.
So: Lijah needed help from early intervention, because his parents weren't giving him the feedback he was looking for. They helped him out! And now he's all our job again, but he can sit, and walk, and even dance!
just being part of worship
And also distract bass players...
comments
We adore EI. It is so much more about giving parents ideas and resources to help their kids than about kids needing help. And for us preemie parents, who have everyone asking us if they're caught up yet, it's especially nice to have a professional do the worrying. Now I feel like I should go blog about EI...
You should! I'd enjoy reading your take.