We're in California visiting Tom's family. So we took the opportunity to drive to San Francisco and have Quinn assessed by a neuropsychologist who specializes in international adoption. She put Quinn through a series of tests and scored him on a number of different levels.
The upshot is that, at 18 months old, he scores as an 11-month-old in most areas. That's a significant enough delay that he probably won't catch up on his own and needs some pretty serious intervention and attention. Luckily, he'll get a lot of that through the Arizona early intervention program. But it was a good wake-up call for us that we need to be working with him a lot more intensely.
I got a good start today at library story time, of all places. We did rhymes and sang songs in addition to reading books, and it really struck me that I should be doing stuff like that with Quinn. But I may be going at it to excess. I obsessively sang, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," complete with hand motions, to the poor boy all afternoon. He did humor me with a twinkle hand motion at Macy's, which warmed my heart. Then he sighed and went back to our beloved hand games and I decided it was time to give him a break.
2 comments:
Are you teaching him some Signs (sign language)? It will help him to communicate with you and lessen his frustation as he gets a bit older. Just the basics...more, milk, food, sleep...they really help!
Good luck with everything. It seems daunting, but one step at a time. :)
Snick, mama to two from Asia
That's a good idea. He seems to know some and we've invented some, but we should teach him some real ones, too! Thanks for the suggestion!
Post a Comment