Caution: little-man at work

Oct. 2, 2011

One of the most difficult aspects of my last full-time position was getting status updates from some of the designers I oversaw. Many times they would hide their works-in-progress until they had things exactly the way they wanted them. If they had called in sick and I needed to get on their computer, they would even come into work, rather than letting someone see their project in a vulnerable state.

Over time Nathan has shown several of these same qualities. Whether is was not rolling, showing progress in crawling, or having the desire to show any progress in eating Nathan is very particular and hidden until he’s mastered the skill. Many times at home we’ll work on the computer or act like we’re not paying attention just to see if he’ll be motivated enough to try on his own.

This week, while at school we were told of a similar story. We use snack time at school not as much to work on volume of food intake, but to work on the motor skills on self-feeding. We’ve seen more desire to bring food to his mouth, normally without any utensils, and it’s been hard not to cheer when he gets a taste of an item on his own. Of course, once he gets the praise, he stops doing the good action and just concentrates on our reaction.

He had some strawberry milk in the morning, but chances are he was hungry by snack time. Teacher Beth was helping another student, and the aide was changing a classmate’s diaper. Nathan was sitting in his chair with a bowl of yogurt in front of him with his preferred spoon in his hand. He didn’t know Beth was still looking over at him, but he looked all around seeing if he saw anyone giving him attention. Thinking no one was looking he slowly raised the spoon up to the outside of his mouth and licked the spoon. He then lowered it back to the bowl, looked around once again and thought he performed his task entirely in stealth mode.

Beth said he did the same thing three times over. She got the aide’s attention and she saw at least one of the last two attempts. He still hasn’t shown that type of skill at home, but he’s a lot more interested in trying to grab the bowl, especially if he has one of his spoons in his other hand.

We still have a way to go before we consider the he’s mastered a new skill, but there seem to be several different skills in-progress. He’s found a new willingness to experiment, explore and motivate himself to get results. It’s said that if it takes 25-50 repetitions for a “typical” kid to learn a new skill, it may take 500-1,000 times for a PMG kid. The journey is long and slow, and it’s important for the child to know their parents, teachers and others still believe in him. No one can do the task for him, but all can be a part in the progress, providing he accepts the help along the way.

Back to previous postings