Stacking Blocks

As I have mentioned before, my son receives a lot of services from the state early intervention program.  Most notable among these services are physical and occupational therapy.  Christian has been seeing his physical therapist (PT) from the time he came home from the hospital at six weeks, and has been receiving occupational therapy (OT) for about a year and a half.  In order to receive these all so important services, he has to be tested on a regular basis to make sure he qualifies.  He definitely qualifies.  At his last evaluation his gross motor skills were in the four to six month range, and his fine motor skills were just slightly ahead.  He was about two years old at the time of the test.

Today Christian had to be reevaluated because he will be transitioning into the school system soon, and they need an up-to-date score.  Since I have been a part of these evaluations, and even worked as a Developmental Specialist for a while, I am very familiar with the proceedings.  It was fun to see boxes being checked that hadn't before, like rolling over and sitting well.  One of the areas that this particular evaluation focuses very heavily on is stacking blocks.  We play with blocks at home, but Christian mostly just knocks down what I build, he doesn't stack.  When he tries to stack, the way he holds the block, and the force with which he sets it down, cause the blocks to buckle away from each other.  When it came time to have him try stacking the blocks I waved my hand dismissively and said "He isn't quite there yet."  But his therapists suggested we give it a try anyway.  I shrugged.  Why not?

Christian's OT demonstrated what she wanted him to do, while his PT and I smiled encouragingly.  There were two blocks stacked in front of him, and he examined them closely.  Then he picked up a third block, and to my amazement, very precariously set it on top of the stack.  It stayed put, and we all cheered!  Then his tray was cleared and he was handed one block at a time.  I think I was holding my breath as he very slowly stacked his first two blocks, then was handed a third.  He set the third block on top of the others, then grinned with pride as we let out a chorus of hoorays.  He, of course, destroyed the tower after that, but no one minded.

Christian still definitely qualifies for services, and he probably will for quite some time, but he showed major growth today.  His gross motor skill level rose into the seven to ten month range, and his fine motor skills were much closer to age level.  All his language and cognitive skills were past age level, which they always have been, and I couldn't have been prouder.  It's funny how something as small as stacking three blocks can represent so much progress, and so much beauty.