Developmental Delays

Let me just preface this by saying I am NOT saying that people with clubbed feet are mentally handicap. I've been in "trouble" before on this topic when people take it the wrong way. It is just that children of any physical handicap sometimes fall behind in other areas because their bodies and brains are working so hard in one area.

The first year of his life we had about 4-5 friends with boys all born around the same time. By everyone's first birthdays my son was just learning to crawl when everyone else's children were running. It was at that point that we started hanging around children 4-6 months younger than him, but he seemed to identify with them more. It wasn't a conscious move on my part to have him hang around younger kids, it just kinda happened.

Around 15 months our pediatrician became concerned that our son wasn't talking. At first I was reluctant, thinking that our pediatrician was being a little overly concerned as I didn't think 15 months was really an age to be concerned about lack of talking - especially for a boy. But then he explained how our son might really need an extra push in the verbal area since his body was working so hard just on crawling and walking. We figured it couldn't hurt, so we set up an appointment with a program in our area called Early Childhood Intervention.

Teachers came to our home and used the Bayley's Scales of Infant Development to determine if he qualified for help. He scored a 76 out of 80... just barely "failing" the test, which then qualified us for the program. It is an in home program, so a teacher comes to our house once a week for an hour until he turns 3 years old. At that point he can be re-evaluated and possibly qualify for continued assistance, though it would no longer be in home.

We are currently almost a year into having assistance and our son has BOOMED from barely babbling to having complete 3-4 word sentences. Super pleased with his progress and it is fantastic to be able to have verbal communication with him!