Today was a very exciting day for me, as it was the first day on which I got to see two of my children for the second time and as I got to experience a first visit of Janine. Janine picked me up at 9:00 am and we headed to our first patient, a little 9 months old baby. The baby boy suffers from Williams Syndrome, a neurodevelopment disorder caused by the deletion of genes on one chromosome. The symptoms of this disorder affect the face, as the upper lip is usually a little bigger and flat and the ears are eventually lower than usual. Children who have the syndrome are often easier with meeting strangers and very social. Even though this was the first time Janine saw the little boy, he was very open with her and not shy at all, which is a reflection of his symptoms. It was very interesting for me to be with Janine on a first visit and observe how she approaches the child and his family. The interaction with the child in this case was easy due to his high social skills, but generally a first visit is dedicated to getting to know the child and getting more familiar with his or her problems rather than already practicing therapy on it. Also, the therapist goes over important key facts with the family, such as the medical history and the concerns. This little guy has a hard time with sitting up on his own, with sleeping and with eating. Therefore Janine did certain exercises to eventually get a special seating chair for him that will help him develop the needed strength in his back muscles to do it on his own later on. She also went into more detail about his sleeping and eating problems and suggested a lot of new stuff to try for the family.
Our second patient today, was a 21 months old boy that I had seen once before. Janine sees him for his speech problems and a delay of his muscles coordination. The little guy is very bright and amazed me again with how much vocabulary he already had. Compared to last week, he warmed up a lot faster, as he already knew me now. One thing that was a significant change though, were his substitutions. When a child learns how to speak, it usually substitutes certain hard sounds with others; such that they rather say "tar" than star. Compared to the substitutions of the ones from two weeks ago, today's were completely different, which is very atypical and a little concerning to Janine. Since he trains speaking with his mom through flashcards, Janine took advantage of the situation and organized his flashcards into sounds for which the mouth is shaped in the same way. "B" and "P" sounds came together as well as "D" and "T". Janine is hoping that training the flashcards in these groups will help him to shape his mouth the right way, distinguish between the two sounds and to get rid of the weird substitutions.
I was completely amazed by our last visit. It was with a one and a half year old boy who we had seen before because of his gross motor skills delay and his failure to thrive. Unfortunately, we did not get to see him the week before because he was sleeping, so that it had been two weeks since our last visit. In the mean time, his mom had gotten a baby girl and so Janine and I were curious to see how he was doing with all that chaos going on. To our surprise, he seemed like he had grown up a lot, as if he had realized that he had to be a big brother now. His communication was better in the sense that he showed his understanding of language and made more purposeful sounds. The biggest process he made though was with his body movements. On my first visit, he barely bent his knees to reach for things on the floor and was very uncomfortable with lying on his stomach and turning. He would get so mad at Janine trying to get him into a crawling position, since he never crawled, that he would cry and need a lot of time to recover. Today though, his knees almost bend to a 90 degree angle and he was much more moveable and started to get the idea of reaching down and coming back up again. He would not get upset with Janine and was able to get himself back up again. It was very interesting to see how much his new baby sister had affected him. Since she has been born, his mom does not have as much time and attention for him anymore as she used to, so that he is much better with relying on other people for help and being independent. Having a baby close to him, will also help him with his movements, even to the point where he might crawl as he has someone in his size that won’t push him to do certain things. Through playing with his newborn sister, Janine hops that he will imitate her and go with her through some important development stages that he did not go through. I was amazed at how fast this had already happened and how much progress could happen within just 2 weeks.
Another important thing that I learned about today is the patience with which any adult has to come up when dealing with a child. Janine purposefully gives children a pause after she made a movement or sound or asked them to do something. She used to even count in her head to make herself wait and give the child this time. For the baby or toddler, this is the time they need to process information to know what is asked or to know what to do or imitate. Especially when dealing with disabled children, this time is important, as their processing of information might be slower. As adults we tend to just move on quickly as we can process information so much faster than children can, but for their development and in order to help them, patience will help them.
I was very excited about today as I learned so much, got to see a first visit and saw two of my children for the second time. With this amazing start into my last week, I am very excited about what is to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment