Parent Thread

Had my son's yearly IEP meeting yesterday. Short version of what he has been doing: Integrated general education (not purely special ed) with individual and group work for speech pathology, social education, occupational therapy and education in general.

With the progress he's been making over the past few years they're moving him off the individual sessions for everything. It's all going to be group oriented from this point forward and generally only once a week for most of the services. They're also not recommending summer services in the usual sense because of his progress, but instead are going to have him do some targeted "camps" to help maintain something of a routine since one of the things we're still working on is his demeanor after any sort of layoff. This kid gets a serious case of the Mondays.

My son is now in the "I am going to pull up and stand everywhere all day long" phase. He doesn't know how to gracefully sit, so a lot of sideways or backwards falling and tears.

Still no signs of progressing in speech and not doing any waving, pointing, or high fives.

Whelp, I have two driving 15 year old daughters. I've let them drive a little before, back roads in the country, but it is something totally different to sit beside them while they drive in to town. I'm not an anxious guy, and I try really hard to be a non-anxious presence while they're learning to drive, but damn.

10 months. I know there isn't really any cause for alarm until a year, but still a little worried.

Ao-_sl said:

How old is he again? Boys seem to develop speech later... though it may be birth order in my situation (oldest - daughter - developed speech and sign language early, middle - son - later by comparison, youngest - son - in between the first two).

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My 2nd was quicker on everything- but she is fairly close (16mo) to the first and is always trying to emulate/catch up to her big sister- so she walked, talked, potty trained etc. all faster and easier than the first. She still will talk baby-like but its just her trying to get attention and be babied and we are trying to break her of that habit. youngest was also in a multi-kid daycare and in preschool sooner and that developed her social skills faster, the oldest was taken care of by my mother in law solo for almost a year.

a_skeleton_03_sl said:

My 14 year olds have been practicing and it is nerve wracking. I am going to lose at least one car in a stupid accident less than 6 months after they are driving on their own, I just know it.

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Get them used Hondas, those cars are the closest things to invincible you can get on this planet.

All my children had completed their first novels by 10 months old.

Ao-_sl said:

Yeah, you're over-thinking it. The kid will be fine. My 14 month old just started doing high fives and yelling specific words (mom/dad/dog/etc). He's been yelling for attention for a while (and walking since 7 mo), but 10mo and not walking is fine.

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Yeah I figured.

Do kids normally walk at 7mo? That seems fast haha. I'm not worried about the walking, he' sdoing the pull-up and cruise things so that's fine. Mostly worried about communication .

I told my wife I want a Buick Grand National GNX when our son starts drving and she told me it was the ugliest car she's ever seen and now we are divorced

Kid just started doing the coolest thing evar! He started playing a little game with himself. He'll grab a ball or something roundish that will roll and he'll push it then frantically crawl after it, push it again, crawl again, etc... He did this for about 15 minutes straight last night. I was quietly cracking up. I didn't want to ruin his fun. I suspect he learned this from watching one of our dogs play fetch because it's not anything that my wife or I showed him how to do.

Cad_sl said:

Yea holy shit dude my boys didn't start talking anything recognizable until they were past 2 years old, I thought they were retarded. They're totally fine though, don't overthink it.

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Not really the talking thing but the hand stuff.

Apparently if they aren't doing it at 12 months nowadays they believe they could be on the spectrum

Our kid wasn't babbling much at all then a few weeks it was an overnight change. All of a sudden he was.

My youngest was quite late in speaking. Like he didn't say much before he was 18 months, but then he started speaking with sentences. We may have complicated things for our kids because we speak French at home. We really wanted our kids to be at least bilingual, and that's the language we chose.

Noodlemod_sl said:

Yeah I figured.

Do kids normally walk at 7mo? That seems fast haha. I'm not worried about the walking, he' sdoing the pull-up and cruise things so that's fine. Mostly worried about communication .

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Hell no. 10 months to 16 months is normal for walking. There is a wide range on mobility and verbal skills and kids that tend to do well on one don't do so hot on others. There are always kids that are super stars or better yet parents trying to make them appear that way but the ranges are there for a reason because plenty of kids hit all ends of them and in between.

My daughter is more on the verbal side than mobility. She walked at 13 months or so like a cow on crutches but her forte is verbal and more cerebral type stuff. Even now at 2.5 she isn't super adventurous with mobility. She isn't the kid that is swinging by the monkey bars or jumping down the slides backwards. She is just more reserved.

If you spend your time on forums you get a pretty wide range of normal for kids. That is why it is difficult to catch issues early because many kids are just fine but develop a little slower. Boys especially when it comes to verbal and social skills.

I find people tend to be full of shit when evaluating their kids performance. The way you hear it on baby forums if your kid isn't saying sentence fragments by 1 or potty trained by 2 they are behind. Then when you look in the real world and see any toddler just about every 2 - 3 year old is in diapers and can barely say a word even when mom or dad is speaking to them. Shit, plenty of 3-4 year olds are still in diapers and parents are struggling to potty train them before "school" aka day care to save some money.

I hear people in our group say "oh she's potty trained". Why is she still in a diaper then? "Oh well she is pee potty trained but not poo". Well then she isn't potty trained dumb ass.

The key to evaluating your kid is to look at the milestones. What should my kid be able to do at 1 years old. 2 years old etc. When you look at the list, look at it reasonably. Can your kid do most of the list and maybe some other things? They are fine. Even if they are missing something, say waving, its fine so long as everything else is progressing normally. They are going to learn.

Unless they are way behind and not showing progression in any of the milestones you really don't have to worry. Also keep in mind that boys tend to progress slower with verbal and social communication.

My son didn't talk much until he was 2 but then his speech took off and now at 3 he is well spoken and reuses words that he only hears once. He also just loves to hear talking so much in so if the radio is on he always asks me to turn it to talk radio.He also gets upset if he cant hear the words when my wife and I are talking.

My wife was really worried about it but I didn't let it bother me to much. She talked to a speech therapist for about 10 minutes in passing about her concerns and the lady sent us a diagnosis telling us he had delays and we needed to start a plan. This without even so much as seeing our son. I told the wife that we would wait until he was 2 and then talk about it again but I wasn't concerned yet. He understood what was asked of him but at the time was just quiet. He never did much baby talk or grunts.

My daughter on the other has been babbling since about 5 months. She grunts barks and yells all the time. She also mimics social cues much better then my son ever did; smiling, waving, head shaking etc. You can tell just by the tone of her babbling if her brother is messing with her. However at almost a year she is only now pulling herself up onto stuff were as my son was walking at 10 months.