22 months: Six months have passed since we started Whitney's therapy. It seems like a flash in our lives. All of her evaluations are coming in...some good and some disappointing. Her social skills are around 16 months; her cognitive skills are around 15 months, and her receptive language is around 18 months. All of those are very incouraging, and I am exceptionally pleased at the speech results. One thing about her skills is that they are not very consistent. She even has one or two skills at the 20-23 month level! I have heard this is very typical for children with sensory issues.

Whitney’s fine motor skills are centering around 6-8 months. She is still not using her thumbs consistently to pick up objects, which is a 3-5 month old skill. Her pincer grasp is just now starting to develop, and that is not consistent either. On a good note, Whitney has started to draw on her chalkboard spontaneously, a 12-15 month skill. Feeding issues are still a problem. She will rarely transfer food to her mouth with her hand, and rarely uses a spoon. Some of this is will, some is sensory defensiveness, and some is lack of ability to use her thumbs.

Whitney's challenges in fine motor, and some in gross motor, are exacerbated by her sensory defensiveness. Whitney will fight putting her feet on the ground, limiting her time to practice standing. She does not want to touch wet substances except water. It needs to be a focus of her play right now. I guess we need to stock up on shaving cream and pudding!

Whitney’s expressive language is around 7-10 months. Her low tone has contributed to her speech issues. We are using pictures to communicate with Whitney. This has really opened her ability to communicate. She now can express choices to us.

We just got back from the Pediatric Neurologist. In the three months since our last visit, Whitney has made progress. She has learned to crawl in those three months. Since some of her skills are now a year behind or more, we are moving forward to do more chromosome testing. We did a blood test today for subtelomeric FISH (fluorescence in situ hybridization), a high resolution chromosome analysis. This test will detect small structural chromosome abnormalities not detected in our last round of testing.

http://www.ggc.org/Diagnostics/Cytogenetics/fish.htm

Whitney was very brave during her blood test. More brave than Mommy.