Parent-Teacher Conferences and RUS's 15-month appointment

So we had parent-teacher conferences today with RUS's day care teacher. The low-down is that he is a wonderful, wonderful boy and they love him dearly. We talked a bit about how amazingly well-adjusted he is--one of the things his teacher said that she'd never really seen before was how well he adjusted to life at day care as a 10-month old. He started at the center in August, about 7 weeks before his first birthday, and from day one he has been 100% fine with being dropped off. No tears, no crying for mommy or daddy, no "where am I?", etc. In fact, his teacher said that she kept waiting for the shoe to drop, but it never did. He just seamlessly moved from not-in-daycare to being in daycare, and he is just a really happy, easygoing kid. If he could, he would live on the climber. He loves to go around and around and around and around on that thing.

The bulk of the conference focused on discussing RUS's developmental progress as they observe it at the center. They administer two kinds of assessments and basically present their observations to us. We talked about our reactions and whether we were seeing some of the same things.

There are four main areas of assessment: Personal/Social/Emotional, Motor Skills, Cognition, and Communication. RUS has met or exceeded all the milestones for his age group in Personal/Social/Emotional and Motor Skills, and he had several "emerging" skills in Communication and Cognition.

In Cognition, he is learning to (but does not consistently or always) "retrieve household (or classroom) objects from usual locations on request" nor does he "put away objects in correct places and notice when they are not in the correct place." We talked a bit about how this might be in part due to the relatively busy nature of the infant classroom as it is--the room is fairly small and there is not a lot of dedicated storage for specific items. At home it is a little bit of the same thing, and I'll be honest: we haven't really involved him in clean up a whole lot, other than to motivate him to put things in a basket or to move books back to the general shelf area. So it's something we can try to encourage more of.

In Communication he's a little bit behind as he's still working on a few 12-month skills such as imitating familiar two-syllable words with and without syllable change (e.g., "mama"; "uh-oh")-- he does imitate some things and he says a relatively limited range of sounds, but he does not just try to imitate whatever we are saying or really vary what he says in response to what we say to him. Basically, he's not really talking a whole lot. He signs, as I've posted about recently, and he communicates well. We know he can understand everything we say, and we are not at all concerned about a hearing loss because he can hear noises I can't and identify them. He just doesn't really change up what he says.

As of now, he regularly--and often--says "mamama," usually referring to me but sometimes it is just him babbling mamama; "uh-oh"; "ah-ah-ah-ah"; dada; "at" (we think, referring to the cats). At school they taught him to say "no" but we don't hear this at home. There's more I'm forgetting, too. He can also say "neigh" and "baa" and "eow" (for meow), and we've been working on a few others ("moo", in particular). So we talked about ways we can motivate him to try and talk more, and the thing that was emphasized several times is that it's not something to worry about--YET. It is something to keep an eye on.

Here's an excerpt from some guidelines his teacher provided for us:

"Toddlers 12-18 Months
"Toddlers at this stage should begin to watch others in their environment. They develop the ability to show emotion in their body language and babbling. They will begin to show understanding, or receptive language skills by pointing to objects when asked to do so or by following simple directions.

"During this period, delays may be a concern if the child:

• continues to show little eye contact with caregivers and other children;
• appears to show a limited range of emotions;
• has not begun to say simple words for common people and objects;
• cannot point to two or three major body parts such as his head, arms, feet, or legs;
• does not point to familiar objects or people when asked or cannot point to pictures of common objects when asked;
• seems uninterested in his environment; and
• does not try to get others' attention or interaction."

Looking at this list, the only item that RUS is not already definitely doing is the 3rd one, and we really do think he's really close to doing it anyway.

In other news, we had his 15-month pediatrician check up too. He weighs 22 lbs exactly and was almost 31 inches long. This put him at somewhere between the 10th and 25th percentiles in weight and between the 25th and 50th percentiles in height, the same curve he was on at his 12-month appointment, too. He got 2 shots and cried, but calmed down well.