Motor planning is really his entire underlying issue, I hear both therapists talk it about ALL the time with Finn... "motor planning, motor planning, motor planning". So what is motor planning? It's the brain's way of organizing and carrying out tasks, particularly new ones. It is NOT related to one's cognitive or physical abilities. What that means is that Finn sometimes has a hard time figuring out ways to do new things, but NOT because he isn't smart enough or isn't physically capable. In fact, he's incredibly bright. His speech therapist is constantly talking about what a very smart kid he is, his comprehension of language is very advanced. He understands language perfectly fine, he just can't produce it and initiate it very well yet. So if you say "can you please bring me your cup of juice?", he easily goes off to find it and bring it back. But if you ask him what he would like to drink, he can't use the words to tell you. He knows what he wants to say but just can't say it. So the step between comprehension and carrying out the action, that organizational step, is what we're addressing.
For speech I've seen really big progress in just the past 4 sessions. Before he started speech therapy, he could only say "Mama" consistently and make a few animal sounds. Now he says "up", "uh-oh", "uh-uh" (for no), "nite-nite", "yeah", "puh" for paci and makes 10-15 animal sounds. We're working on getting him to imitate purposeful word approximations ("mmmmii" for "milk", "ka" for "cup" etc) and really instilling using words or word approximations into him. Honestly, it's something we've never been great at in the past. Zoey is SUCH a chatterbox, it's easy for Finn to lay low in the background. And we always reflexively gave him what we knew he wanted without trying to encourage him to say the words to get it. So we just gave him his cup of milk when we saw him grunting and pointing at his cup, instead of getting down to his level and really enunciating "mmmmmmilk". He's at the point now though where he's getting very frustrated trying to make his needs understood, so speech therapy is really happening at the right time. I LOVE his speech therapist, she's exactly perfect. She and I both agree that it's best to be assertive with getting Finn to talk. A lot of times people say about kids "oh they'll talk when they're ready" and just let things take their course. I think that probably works fine for 99% of kids and that's what I always said in the past about Finn. But I'm noticing how frustrated he gets by not being able to talk, he's very resistant to working at learning the words (because it's hard he avoids it so it's not something he willingly will just work on by himself), but then gets SO proud of himself and 100% more happy when he gets it and can say something. When he is able to say "yeah" or "uh-uh" to a question, you can tell he's SO pleased by being able to communicate. So I know we're on the right track.
For PT, like I said he's really doing fine but he likes the activities we do and it helps him address motor planning overall so we're continuing with it. In the beginning, he had a tough time with basic movement coordination, like he couldn't go from sitting to standing not because he lacked the strength but because he had a hard time organizing and coordinating the movements to make that happen. But once shown, he picked it up super fast. Most kids intuitively get that stuff and don't need the extra steps, but Finn needed some encouragement. He easily grasps all the physical stuff though once you guide him through it. This past week we went to Possibility Place and worked on going up and down steps using the hand rail. At first he was tentative and shy, but then started flying around with ease. He was climbing under and over things and the best thing is that now physically he's getting creative and showing a lot of initiative with figuring things out.
The funny thing is that his fine motor skills have never been affected by any motor planning. He's a WHIZ at anything fine motor. He puts together the same puzzles that Zoey does. He's better at sorting shapes and drawing. At 21 months he uses a spoon and fork better than Zoey, who's 3 1/2. Today we went out to eat and Zoey and Finn both got a strawberry sorbet for dessert. Finn sat and used his spoon all by himself with minimal assistance, easily eating his whole dessert. Zoey needed a lot of help and got so frustrated by it. So, different kids just develop different skills... differently!
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