Physical Therapy III

We've started to work more seriously on getting Aaron to stand. We focused on sitting up first, and now that he is getting better at crawling, standing is the next hurdle.

I've tried getting him to stand at the coffee table to reach the remote or books, but usually he would reach the object of his desire and then sit down.

But last week, I asked his sitter Katrina to work with him on standing. She started off with the coffee tables, as I had suggested, but she had the bright idea of moving the remote control out of reach again as soon as he got it, so that he stayed standing for longer stretches.

Then, she tried using the leather ottoman we have in his play area. We had taken the wheels off it to use for this purpose after our visit to physical therapy, but it hadn't really worked because he would sit down as soon as he grabbed whatever was on top.

But Katrina tried anyway and the first time he tried to grab a block, he ended up knocking it off the other side. So we replaced it and instead of grabbing it, he knocked it off again. And laughed. It became a game for him. So she just continued to put items on top while he continued to knock them off and he ended up standing for several minutes before his legs got too tired.

On Friday, we went to our friend Deirdre's house to meet with her sister who works with developmentally delayed kids. I guess I expected her to give us an assessment of him, but it wasn't quite that formal. She did watch him play and felt his legs while he was standing (and confirmed what we suspected - that his left leg is weaker than his right). But mostly she just gave us a lot of information on resources available to us.

It turns out, there is a federally funded program called Early Start that provides help for parents of children age 0-3 who have concerns about their child's development. Someone will come out to your home and assess your child and if they are delayed enough, they will qualify for free treatment. You don't need a doctor to refer you. And at any point, you can turn down the help. It sounds like a great program. I'm so glad to learn about it since now we don't have to worry about what our insurance will cover. And she gave us all kinds of brochures and pamphlets on the program.

Our concerns are about Aaron's gross motor skills, but Early Start can help if you have concerns about other types of developmental skills - social, emotional, communication, cognitive, as well as hearing and vision. You can find out more information about the program here. That is the California website - each state runs their own, I believe.

Our next visit with the pediatrician is on Tuesday. We are going to wait to talk to her before contacting the Early Start program. I want to see if we should see any other specialists to rule out any neurological or physical problems or if there is some way to get our insurance to cover the physical therapy (which Deirdre's sister thought was an appropriate step for Aaron and she thought the insurance should be covering it - even if he doesn't have a diagnosed medical condition).

The other benefit of visiting Deirdre on Friday is that we got to see her koi pond. She has about 60 and they were so beautiful. We got to feed them, too. Aaron seemed to really like the koi. But he was upset that we wouldn't let him eat their food.