Today is Jessica’s birthday! What a great day to post in her honor. I can’t believe I have a 23-year-old “child”! I can remember every moment of those 23 years, though I often forget what I ate the day before last! 🙂 I remember watching her breathe as an infant (you know we all did that with our first baby), to that first smile, first time feeding her baby food, first words. They were all very first experiences we had together, Jessy and I. When her brother was born, I had all of those firsts with him as well, but his firsts were then my seconds (in a good way!).
Last post I started to discuss developmental stages. I am a clinician and I work with kids who are on the Autistic Spectrum all the time, but that is their secondary diagnosis..when I see them, I am treating a mental health issue that is in addition to the Spectrum issues. SO I am not an expert on Autism and that is not what this discussion is about, I am on expert on Jessica. For that reason, as I talk about the developmental stages, delays, etc. it will be in relation to her….with a bit of clinical explanation so it all makes sense. We all go through the same developmental stages from birth to death actually. Our brain is not fully developed until we are 25 years old, but it is open to growth and change for our lifetime. We emotionally and cognitively continue to mature well into our senior years. Some mature faster than others in all areas or maybe just in some areas. Lets first break it down a bit. Developmental stages can be categorized into sub stages:
Physical development: fine and gross motor – Grasping, writing, cutting with scissors, walking, running, skipping, jumping.
Cognitive development: concrete thinking, abstract thinking, information processing, perceptual skills and language learning and executive functioning.
Social/Emotional development: how one manages emotion and the ability to establish developmentally appropriate peer relationships.
Of course there is also sexual development (remember Freud?) and other developmental domains, but for the purposes of this article, I am just going to stick to these. Generally, as a therapist, when I am assessing a child, I am looking at if their physical development was within normal limits or late; is there a processing disorder or speech delay; and do they have age appropriate, positive peer relationships; is it easy to make friends or a struggle and are they able to maintain those friendships. In addition, are they able to have a reciprocal conversation with me or are they single focussed on a topic of their preference?
In Jessica’s case, from birth to 5 everything seemed to be going along smoothly overall, but after she turned 5 and Kindergarten had started, things became a bit more noticable. I think I normalized things like her difficulty zipping and buttoning. But in Kindergarten, I was more concerned that she was the only one by the end of Kindergarten she was the only one that could not cut paper in a straight line (she still struggles with this today, but is much better) and that she was they only one in her little group of friends (which was a group created by mommies getting the kids together) who whined and tattled over small things rather than just being able to let it go or problem solve by figuring out how to share or take turns.
Does this sound familiar? What was 0-5 and Kindergarten like for your child?
Being Jessica's Mom: Growing up on the Autistic Spectrum 