This morning, we hosted three lovely folks from Early Intervention. For anyone out there who is not familiar with EI, it’s a pretty awesome thing. Basically, if you or your pediatrician have concerns about your infant or toddler’s developent from birth through age 3, you can request an evaluation. They will send out a team (developmental specialists, occupational therapists, and the like) and do a complete evaluation on your child. That means, if you call because you’re worried about speech, they’ll evaluate your child for fine and gross motor, too. The eval is free, they billed my insurance. And if you qualify for services (generally by showing a 30% delay in one or more areas), they’ll send someone to the house to work with your child. A win-win situation, if you ask me!
Anyways, I called about Daniel. I had a very odd, specific concern. Basically, he still drools what seems like an awful lot (though, of course, it slowed down noticeably once I made the call a few weeks ago!). And he has some difficulty chewing certain foods. In particular, ones that you can’t just easily mash, but have to really break down with your teeth. Crackers are no problem, nor are most kinds of fruit. It’s not that he dislikes crunchy things or smooth things. But with, say, a piece of tortellini… he’s most likely to mash it up in his mouth (getting out the yummy filling) and then spit out the actual pasta if it’s even the slightest bit al dente. And it’s not a question of dislike. He’ll ask for more tortellini (or clementine wedge, or grape, etc.). And he eats a reasonable amount of food, is gaining weight, etc etc. It’s not a huge problem, and I honestly suspected that we probably would not qualify for EI services. But I just wanted it to get checked out and maybe get some suggestions for how to work on it.
So, three women came to my house this morning. All very friendly, all fairly young. Basically, two of them played with Daniel while the third asked me some health history-type questions. It was fascinating to watch. Each toy or object they’d bring out of the bag was designed to get at a particular behavior. See if he’d do pretend play, model behavior, stack blocks, match shapes. As far as he was concerned, of course, he was just playing with these nice new people. He was his usual charming, sociable, talkative self. There were a few things when they would ask him a question, and I had to stop myself from chiming in “c’mon, buddy, you know that one!” Especially when it’s something he most definitely knows/understands/is capable of. But he’s a toddler, and sometimes he’s just going to elect not to participate. And you can tell those times, because he gives you the Daniel face. It looks something like this, but with a bit more brow furrowing:

Oh, and when it came time to check on his chewing? I gave him some clementine for a snack, which he always mashes and then spits out. Except when the nice lady is there watching him. Then he swallows segment after segment. Show-off. Way to make mommy feel silly.
At any rate, at the end of the eval, they will let you know how your child did, basically scoring them at a particular number of months for each developmental area. So, if he were scoring right on target, that would be 19 months. He would have to score at 14 months or below to qualify for services. How did he do?
Gross and Fine Motor Skills: 19 months
Spoken language: 20 months
Receptive (understanding) language: 22 months
Cognition and problem-solving: 24 months
Social interaction: 26 months
Oh, and the feeding/chewing is under the umbrella of “self-care,” where he scored… 19 months. She did notice the drooling, and said that he does show a little bit of low muscle tone in the lip area, which usually would lead to speech concerns. Not with my chatterbox. She suggested having him use a straw (which he already does), and try sucking thicker things like yogurt or smoothies. Also blowing raspberries, buzzing your lips, and trying to blow bubbles are all good for that kind of muscle tone. For things specific to food, she suggested that we try to work on more foods with mixed textures, which is where he seems to have a hard time. So try dipping things, like fruit in yogurt or cracker in hummus, or even try eating things like soup that have more than one texture in the same bite.
Yeah. Basically, my kid rocks. Obviously, as his mother, I have long suspected it. But nice to have outside confirmation.
He did particularly well on imitating unfamiliar sounds (zoop! zip!), finding a hidden toy in several different variations, and grouping similar objects together. He showed good understanding of basic shape puzzles, even if he couldn’t quite get the triangle to fit properly, and did a great job labeling familiar objects with the correct word. I’m so proud.
All of this is not entirely just to brag about my own kid (though, it’s my blog, so I can do that), but also to say that getting evaluated by Early Intervention was a really good experience. The people were nice and great with the kids, and gave immediate and helpful feedback even though we didn’t qualify for any ongoing services or therapies. Birth to age three, people. If you have any worries, use it!