OT For Lachlan
We took Lachlan to the OT today to get assessed. Basically, the therapist was quite confused by Lachlan and doesn’t quite know what’s going on with him. In summary he said the following…
• Physically, Lachlan is very strong with his only issues being his arm strength and his gait. However, his arm strength should improve with playing on the monkey bars at gymbaroo. His gait is apparently a bit wide and a bit immature, but it should fix itself too.
• Lachlan seems to be pretty organised as far as his motor planning goes. That means that when he makes a decision to do something he’s pretty good at executing it.
• The doc didn’t see too many problems with his fine motor skills that couldn’t be explained by lack of exposure.
• There were some signs of traits that might be considered autism-like, but the doc really wasn’t sure as there were plenty of signs that he isn’t autistic. For example, Lachlan tried to escape a number of times, and on one occassion the doc told me to let him go to see what he’d do. He went all the way out the door, down the stairs and into the street without looking for me. (The doc was following him.) This was a bit of a worry because the doc was hoping that he’d look for me and not go too far without me.
• The doc considered it imperative that Lachlan get into speech therapy as soon as possible. So much so that he called the speech therapist to try and get the boys bumped up the waiting list. He spoke to the speech therapist while I was there and we’re hoping to get Lachlan assessed in a couple of weeks. The doc thought that it was more important to get Lachlan into speech therapy than Daniel because he was more likely to get immediate benefit, whereas Dan will probably be in therapy for the long haul.
• Lachlan is going to get occupational therapy too. The doc thinks that he needs some sensory integration to help his concentration, and to help him learn to deal with unfamiliar situations without looking to escape all the time. The doc would like to get input from the speech therapist as well for exercises to do with Lachlan. The main focus of the OT will be to use the sensory integration to help facilitate the speech development.
So it was quite beneficial going and even though it’s going to be expensive for us we’re really optimistic about seeing some good results for Lachlan.
In other news, we have another nanny working as an emergency fill-in this week. She says she’s also interested in the permanent position so we’re thinking about offering her the spot. Apparently she has quite a bit of experience even though she’s pretty young, as her family has owned and operated childcare centres. She also has experience with working with twins and working with kids with autism. She seems pretty capable and confident so hopefully she won’t develop issues.
Also, the boys and I had a bit of fun last night. Richard had a work function so I attempted to bathe the boys and put them to bed on my own. The first challenge was getting them both into the bathroom and undressed. I did this by putting Lachlan in the bath while I fetched Daniel, but this was a mistake as it was impossible to stop Lachlan turning on the taps while I undressed Daniel. Once I had them in the shower it was okay but getting them out and dried was my next challenge. Dan came out first and I dried him off and put his cute little hoodie towel on while I got Lachlan out and dried. However, while I was wrestling with Lachlan, Dan crawled back into the shower and got his towel sopping wet. I finally got them both out of the bathroom only to start challenge number three. Cue some Benny Hill music as you imagine me running from one end of the house to the other chasing two mostly naked babies trying to herd them into the bedroom. The boys thought it was hilarious! Anyway, getting them dressed and ready for bed wasn’t any easier, but I managed and the boys went to sleep really well. It’s not something I’d like to try again for a while!
Finally, Lachlan has been doing really well with feeding himself breakfast. We’re still struggling with getting lunch and dinner for him, but it’s a start.
