Fine Motor-Skills Bonanza, and Musical Notes

Light switches and door handles are a fine motor-skills bonanza.  When Blake was being carried in our arms at 5mo (3.5mo CA), I taught him to lean down and turn the door-handles and toggle the light-switches.  He got the hang of it instantly, and the only downside was as soon as he grew tall enough, he could get into any room in the house he desired!  Still, it's a matter of supervision more than anything; one may as well teach children anything they are fascinated to learn, and manage the consequences through supervision.  It also taught him to be helpful from a very young age.

He is going through a time of limited attention span at the moment, getting easily distracted and not necessarily wanting to do any activity for very long.  I hope this is a phase...it's hard to go from activity to activity so quickly.  He is currently playing on the i-pad and strumming the guitar concurrently.  Well, he was ~ now he's at the piano.  Gosh, how they switch quickly between tasks at this age!

Speaking of music, I taught him music in the womb, singing and tapping in time on my belly.  He has his own special song I sang lots when he was in utero, trying out the theory that it is recognisable to them ex utero, and will calm them when unsettled.  Can't say I can confirm this.  Any song I sing does calm him, though ~ I suspect all children are calmed by their parents singing.  The upshot of being a muso is that Blake has picked up a sense of musicality; he adjusts his tapping to be in time to the music (a friend yesterday asked me how a toddler can play a drum in time to music ~ the answer is 'easily' if one has paid attention to their musical education and harnessed it from very early on).  Blake became obsessed with 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' or the 'Alphabet Song' tune, if you prefer, and recognisably sung it, almost in tune, from the start of this year.  Obsessively.  Over, and over, and over (and over and over) for a fortnight.  It was the first thing he did upon waking, and his 'default sound' for ages.  He's still not perfected his pitch, but does get the timing and most of the notes right, which is pretty good for his age.  Now he just needs to work on his 'voice...and 'sing' rather than 'hum'!

Blake playing the mini piano at around 12mo (10.5mo CA)

If you want your baby to pick up rhythm, generally speaking,  tap the rhythm on any part of their body with a spare hand whenever you are listening to, singing, or making music.  This blog is not supposed to be about any kind of advice; it is purely my notes on my child, and I will avoid any comparisons to other kids where possible...but I suppose a few tips on things I know to work or help in teaching toddlers won't go completely astray.

Music is a great way to enjoy time with toddlers; it focuses, teaches, and enlivens them ~ it is a great inclusion into their lives wherever possible...and you will usually have a captive audience who won't care if you are a little off-tune or off-beat ~ unlike any other audience in the world!  In fact, the more offbeat your compositions, the better!

Fundamental Circling

The development of Fundamental Motor Skills (FMS) has been really fun to watch.  Blake started circling ~ spinning on the spot ~ about 2-3 months ago, always to the left.  I'm still not sure how he managed to do this for the first time while drinking a sippy of milk with both hands, arms elevated above his head to get the last drops, looking at the ceiling and stay on his feet.  This 'to the left' mirrored his first rolling manouvres at 4-5mo ~ always to the left to start.  Maybe it is because he appears to be right-handed and this makes better use of his stronger right arm...?

Interestingly, a Maternal Health Nurse once told me that most children exhibit their milestone attainment 3 months later now they sleep on their backs rather than their bellies, due to not pushing up on their toes frequently in their sleep as they used to when they were belly sleepers.  So the 'tummy time' is very much needed for back-sleeping babies to stimulate leg strengthening and muscle control.  This answer came in response to my query as to whether Blake was taking longer than most to reach these milestones.  But back to the circling and handedness thoughts...

A southpaw in the womb ~ Blake's left hand touching  his face ~ topmost of image, just left of centre 

It does seem Blake is right-handed, not a southpaw as we were convinced looking at him through the wombs-eye-view of ultrasound.  I had about 14 scans due to a severe placental abruption, and in all the early ones, and many of the later ones, he is sucking his left thumb.  I took this to mean LH dominance.  A NICU nurse told me handedness doesn't appear in babies till roughly 12mo, but Blake seemed to be a 'lefty' in the womb and a 'righty' almost from birth.  He is fairly ambidextrous most of the time, but showed a strong preference for his right hand from about 3mo.

Blake didn't really start crawling wholesale till 12mo (10.5m Corrected Age), after prolonged but early commando-crawling.  He didn't take his first 'real' steps unsupported till 17mo (15.5m CA), then it was another 8 weeks till he pulled it out of the bag and started walking everywhere.  Two weeks after that, he was running.  Now he won't walk and runs EVERYWHERE.  Yesterday he spent an hour dashing after the dog all over the garden.  He learnt to jump ~ holding onto my hands ~ and perfected it holding onto tables.  Thinks it's a riot if we both jump together.  He worked out he could 'do the twist' a few weeks ago, and was twisting everywhere like a mini tornado for a week or so.

The little guy is obsessed with How Things Work and will repeat small motor skills exercises like clicking a pen, taking off its cap, twisting a knob over and over until he's happy...I was amazed to see him wind up one of his toys 3 weeks ago, perfectly, without fault.  It seemed advanced for his age group but unsurprising given the time he's devoted to fine motor skills.  Invariably, like most adults, he uses a clockwise motion with the left hand, and an anti-clockwise motion with his right hand, and gets a bit frustrated if the toy winds the opposite way to the hand he's decided to use.  pparently, many skills take a repetition of 70-100 times before the skill is learnt, but some things are learnt far faster than this; many skills take more tenacity.  Lots of things are learnt by watching, not doing ~ the mirror neurons in our brains help teach us motor skills merely by observing others.

By the way, he's circling/spinning both ways, now ~ but still more often to the left!

THE C-WORD...

Blake is full of 'c' words of late.  Car-car, clock, cup.

After starting to talk at 5mo ~ 3.5m CA ~ (Hello was his first word, then Mum-mum, Dadda, then Hello Mum-mum).  He kept up this chatiness (about 15-20 different words) and minor two-word sentence production until he made a late play at learning to crawl, and then seemed to regress...back to vowel and consonant sounds alone.  It took till about 15mo and the mastering of crawling and standing before the words reappeared wholesale.  

Two months ago he became obsessed by car-cars.  Everything was car-car.  It was like listening to a teenager use the word 'awesome' ~ we cracked up one evening when I offered Blake a tiny piece of chocolate, and in a salivating, Homer Simpson like voice, he intones "caaar-caaaaaar," in utter and total appreciation of the offer.  It is still reserved as his highest accolade and given a multitude of meanings, despite Blake's seeming knowledge of exactly what a car is.  

Then came the 'clocks'... Starting as 'gok' for a few days till he got his tongue around the mixed vowel 'cl' sound, and seeming to apply to any circle.  Within a week he caught on that clocks are clocks and circles are circles.  Now a 'gok' is a rock ~ the 'r' sound is still eluding him ~ and '-ock' words have been the frenzy of the last month that are just starting to die down.  In rapid succession I introduced him to the words Block, Lock, Knock, Rock, all of which are staying item-specific so far.  Block is the only one eluding his verbosity, it's 'bl' sound not yet attempted.  

For some time his receptive language skills have been truly amazing ~ kids this age understand so much more than they are able to say.  Parents have an 'in-tuneness' to their children's understanding of the world and it is amusing when others tell you your child doesn't understand when you are absolutely positive they do.  I have tried out his understanding by asking him to point, to pick up objects, and am not surprised when he gets it most of the time.  So far he understands two-part requests, and sometimes three-part requests (eg, pick up your blue shoes and bring them here, then put them in the cupboard).  Through questioning and Blake pointing, I have ascertained he can identify the following in various contexts: 6 basic colours, 40-50 different animals, the sounds of 20 of them, most methods of transport, visual ID of numbers 1 and 2 and the differences between the amounts 1-4.  He sings 3 songs almost in tune (I am a muso and have trained him since in the womb).

But back to c-words...
His Aunt and Uncle bought him a 'wrist-Clock' with a Car-Car on it, so obvious is his obsession with clocks and cars.

With the packaging of his new watch, last week I witnessed his first true act of imaginary play (he has often fed his stuffed animals from his sippy-cup, and has fed them non-food objects while making an 'eating' noise since 13mo, and substituted items for others in a pretend-play scenario.  Why then, I call this his first true act is because it was not copied from me, and was so spontaneous and out-of-the-box completely unrelated to what we were doing at the time.  His watch packaging is a long box with a plastic window down the centre, and he 'blasted it off' like a rocket, making the requisite 'schooooo' sound of a rocket taking flight.  Discovering the imagination is a fantastic thing; watching someone discover their own imagination for the first time is amazing.

The journey so far...from Prem to Boy

This blog is for my personal observations of my little boy's developmental path and adventure in learning about the world.  Started for my own records, but published here so I can save and manage the info,  hopefully this blog of a Mum's thoughts-made-visible can entertain or possibly enlighten those interested in child development from a layman's perspective.

BIRTH AND BEGINNINGS

Blake was born just over 5 weeks early, gestational age 34+5w, by induction, due to sudden and marked Intra-Uterine Growth Restriction (he went from upper range centiles in the first trimester to 2nd centile by weight at birth, with an average gain of only 45g per week in the final fortnight), caused, most likely, by a severe concealed Placental Abruption (subchorionic haematoma) that made swiss-cheese of my placenta.

From 19w GA whence it was discovered during the routine gender-determining and developmental ultrasound scan, the PA had waxed and waned, healed and abrupted, never bleeding externally but dissecting the placenta and completely infiltrating it until only 20-30% functioned normally, the rest a mass of gritty, piecemeal, dysfunctional tissue.  He had thrived despite the harsh conditions, small, but otherwise healthy.  After some bed rest and a changing medical game-plan based on the tried-and-true scientific 'wait-and-see' approach, my uterus became irritable ('irritable uterus syndrome') from the constant bleeding, sending me into early contractions at 27.2w.  I was hospitalised due to Threatened Pre-term Labour (fibronectin test negative), given Nifedepine and monitoring, and labour was mercifully arrested.  I had a severe talk with my body and begged and cajoled it into holding on, keeping the boy inside.  This event galvanised my care team into action; my care was transferred to a hospital with a NICU (Mercy Hospital, Heidelberg, Melb.), I had fortnightly growth U/s scans and doppler scans of the abruption to assess the chances of it packing up or keeping going for a little longer, and twice weekly CTG's (fetal monitoring) to assess bub's health.  Also on the list were steroid injections to mature bub's lungs in case of a pre-term birth, and 'Anti-D' shots to help prevent bub's blood from interfering with my immune system, if perchance the placental blood was crossing the chorion into my system.

Then began the waiting game...it felt like russian roulette ~ wanting my baby to hang in there and grow, and not leaving the birth too late till there was no live birth at all...   If it wasn't for the fortunate discovery of an old scholl friend becoming my obstetrician through a chance meeting at the Mercy's maternity clinic, I doubt the outcome would have been anywhere near as optimal as it was.  I was extremely lucky to have a doctor who listened to and cared about my concerns, and responded to my worries.  I was told to expect a 35wk premmie (preemie), then 34, 33, or 32wks or earlier.  I started looking into premmie care; touring the Special Care Nursery and NICU, and all along I had bought clothes in ever decreasing sizes.  This allowed me to at least feel some control and input into an anxiety-provoking and unstable situation.  I eventually stopped at 000000000 sized clothes...and he grew into those clothes ten days after birth.

Blake was born at 11:30pm on the day of the induction, which began at 9am with Artificial Rupture of Membranes and Oxytocin IV (no prostoglandin gel, as it can hyperstimulate the uterus).  I won't go into the labour and birth too much here, but it wasn't that pleasant, with 7 attempts to hook a monitor to bub's head to allow me to move around, uninterrupted monitoring due to the placenta's crap and fragile condition, and uninterrupted vomitting due to my crap and fragile condition.  He emerged, blessedly, with a textbook 'A-Waaa, A-Waa' cry, breathing well, with apgar scores of 9 and 9.

True to the final growth scan, he was 1759g at birth, 44.5cm long with a head circumference of 28cm~ roughly the size of a 30-31wk baby.  He was on CPAP for 11hrs for respiratory support, in an isolette for a fortnight, and in Special Care for a month.

Therefore his age is corrected (reduced) by 5w+2d until 24mo to reflect his prematurity.  I used to think his developmental path lay somewhere in between true and corrected age, but in reality, like all bubs, he is behind his peers in some things, and rockets ahead in others.

I have kept charts and notes since becoming accustomed to this in the SC Nursery, and it will take me sometime to catch up and post my observations here, as he is now almost 21mo (19.5mo corrected age ~ hereafter referred to as CA).

So here begins the task ~ of scribing my notes on past things of note and current updates of Blake's progress through learning.