monokuro boo!

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

It's always stressful whenever I bring Luke for his routine checkup. It's like bringing him for Exams. He would need to be tested by the therapists - the physio, OT (occupational therapist) and Speech & Language Therapist (SLT).

Physio is still not too bad cos Carol just does some simple exercises to check on his development and tell us what kind of exercises we can do with him at home to strengthen certain parts of his muscles. Twice when Carol was not around, other therapists took out their 'assessment sheet' and recorded the 'scores' and told us which areas were lacking. But Carol is so good with kids and probable very experieced, she doesn't usually do the scoring. In fact she doesn't even need that sheet to do the tasks, thus making the experience more pleasant and not so daunting.

OT is the worst cos we (Luke and I) have to sit there while she takes out her little props and test his fine motor skills. Then she'll record the scores on her assessment sheet and tally the scores at the end to tell you how he fared . It's really like sitting for an examination! What is so stressful about this is when you see Luke unable to do a task and she writes the big ZERO on her sheet, and our kiasu mentally says "Oh-oh, FAIL!!". And worse of all, at the end, she tells you "your child is functioning below his age...bla bla bla..." Having been through a few failures, I've learnt to do selective listening and sieve out what I think is irrelevant. Was told the last time that he was 2 months behind, so this time round we weren't expecting much also. Was such a boring test that I unconsciously (and uncontrollably) yawned halfway through (hope OT didn't see that!). Saw her wrote some 'zeros', so thought, 'oops, fail again!' To our surprise Luke passed this time round with flying colours! OT said he's functioning at 14mth!! (corrected age is 12mth). And she told us to continue doing what we've been doing with him (Oops, we've been watching TV with him all day long! Does that mean we should continue letting him watch his favourite Ellen Degeneres?!?)

Okay, she says he's suppose to scribble at this age. Again, the kiasu mother needs him to pass with flying colours again when we visit in 3 months' time (oh dear, how am I going to survive when he goes to school next time? I won't be able to take his failures!). Decided to buy MAGNA DOODLE so that he can learn to doodle and scribble without dirtying my precious wall, floor and furnitures!

Did I see a new toy??