Early Intervention Update Et Al

First of all, I want to correct whoever commented about *my* parents causing the disturbance. My mother is 100% supportive of me in this particular situation, and if my dad was still with us I'm sure he would be too. Just wanted to clear that up so no one thinks bad of my mom. She's awesome. :-)

Secondly, I still can't get through to the parties involved and I'm beginning to think now that it's actually an underlying problem with *me* - which is causing them to look for things that I'm doing wrong. For example...complaint #1 is I'm lazy and won't take care of my own kids. Lazy, eh? How have I gotten A's in every class I've taken over the last year? Has anyone else in this house gone grocery shopping without me in a year? (Excluding the hubs going a few times for a singular forgotten item, but I don't think he's done the full load in a while.) Who's been taking care of the baby? Am I allowed to have a few minutes on the computer to do something relaxing (like genealogy)? The rest of the time on the computer I'm generally doing reviews (which is better than getting paid because it's not taxable). And I don't consider going to school in order to become a nurse laziness. It just hurt my feelings so badly to have someone think I don't want to spend time with my kids. I'd love to have the time to do that! But I'm not the kind of person who can watch kids all day... Honestly, it's not what's best for them because I'd go stir crazy and there's no way they would make any progress in their development. And it surely wouldn't cover the amount of money I'll need to be saving in order for them to go to private Jewish day school when they're ready. But going to nursing school will (IY"H) be able to provide that once I graduate.

And finally, what you've been waiting for, is their Early Intervention update...which further proves that I know perfectly well what's best for my kids (ie being with Malka all day and not me). :-)

Early intervention tests the kids in several different areas: fine motor, cognition, expressive language, receptive language, social/emotional skills, feeding, toileting, dressing/hygiene, and gross motor. (Feeding, toileting, and dressing/hygiene scores are later combined to form the "self care" category.)

Here is how the twins progressed from last May to this May. Their first evaluation was 5/14/10 (13 mos old), second evaluation was 11/12/10 (19 mos old) and their final evaluation was 5/12/11 (25 mos old). At 13 months they needed to be at least 3 months delayed (so less than or equal to 10 months), at 19 mos they needed to be at least 5 months delayed (so less than or equal to 14 mos), and at 25 mos they needed to be at least 7 months delayed (so less than or equal to 18 mos).

Fine Motor Skills
Dovid - 8 mos -> 15 mos -> 23 mos
Chana - 10 mos -> 17 mos -> 22 mos

Cognition
Dovid - 10 mos -> 15 mos -> 21 mos
Chana - 12 mos -> 17 mos -> 23 mos

Expressive Language
Dovid - 7 mos -> 15 mos -> 27 mos
Chana - 12 mos -> 18 mos -> 29 mos

Receptive Language
Dovid - 10 mos -> 16 mos -> 23 mos
Chana - 10 mos -> 17 mos -> 23 mos

Social/Emotional Skills
Dovid - 8 mos -> 21 mos -> 31 mos
Chana - 10 mos -> 21 mos -> 34 mos

Feeding
Dovid - 10 mos -> 12 mos -> 19 mos
Chana - 11 mos -> 14 mos -> 19 mos

Toileting
Dovid - 11 mos -> 11 mos -> 23 mos
Chana - 11 mos -> 11 mos -> 23 mos

Dressing/Hygiene
Dovid - 11 mos -> 15 mos -> 31 mos
Chana - 12 mos -> 17 mos -> 31 mos

Average Self Care
Dovid - 11 mos -> 13 mos -> 24 mos
Chana - 11 mos -> 14 mos -> 24 mos

Gross Motor
Dovid - 13 mos -> 19 mos -> 27 mos
Chana - 13 mos -> 18 mos -> 30 mos

As you can see, the areas that needed the most work have improved so drastically that it amazes me. In many areas they are now above age level, and many times they gained 7+ months of development in 6 months time. (For a note, we did not start working on self care until after the second evaluation, which is why there was little improvement there between the first two evaluations. Also, the twins did not begin with Malka until August of 2010, so she only had them for 3 out of the first 6 months of Early Intervention.)

My son, who was so desperately far behind in expressive language last year is now at a higher level than his age! He also gained two years of social/emotional development in one year and is now well above his age in that skill. Chana has the social/emotional skills of someone nearly a year older and also developed two years in one. I attribute that social/emotional success to having the chance to be around other kids in day care. But the other skills, expressive language most obviously, came from having excellent child care from someone who obviously knows what she's doing. Thank you, Malka, for teaching my Twinners how to talk! Every time they call me Mommy or beg for "Up! Up! Up!" I think of how they were completely silent until they started with you. (No offense at all to Ziva, who was amazing, too! The twins ask for you by name now!)