Liam and Gavin update

LIAM
Liam has achieved so many milestones in such a short period of time it's kind of hard to keep up with them and we've caught NONE on video. :(
The week before I came back to SC, I checked the American Association of Pediatricians website to check what the milestones for 12 months were and see where Liam was in comparison.  I got really concerned because when I looked through the list, Liam had not met a lot of the listed milestones for 12 months.  I felt guilty because I have not spent the one on one time with Liam that I did with Gavin and perhaps that's why he had not met the milestones.  I was looking forward to the times when Gavin would be at preschool and Liam and I would have some 101 together and work on these.  Well, since that time Liam has just grown leaps and bounds.  He now uses his index finger to point to things, shakes his head "no", helps me when I'm dressing him, puts things in containers and takes them out, claps his hands, imitates behavior, hands me everything, "shares" his food, imitates scribbling and WALKS!  These were all things that were on the milestones list that he had not done at all and concerned me but just a few weeks later, he's doing them.  He doesn't walk 100% of the time but now anytime I put him down on the floor, he always starts out by walking and then when he falls tries again.  Around the house he walks short distances like from the train table to his chair in the living room. When he wants to go "long" distances like from the living room to his room, he still crawls- it's just faster.  I do love that I can walk with him "long" distances if I hold his hand.  On the language front, I can see that he is trying.  He repeats words well.  If we say car, he says "ca" and follows the same intonation that we used.  He does this for car, ball, apple, and some animal sounds but he is still not talking on his own other than "leche"- the boy knows his priorities. :)
He has yet to call us da-da or ma-ma.  He has made those sounds but just hasn't put them together for us specifically.  He loves to imitate Gavin and if Gavin makes a funny sound, he repeats it.  They have fun doing this in the car back and forth.  I'm going to wait a couple more months to see if his vocabulary improves and if not then I'm gonna make an appointment for an assessment and see what we could do to help him.

Liam now also signs when he wants something---though it's the same sign for everything! :)
We haven't been as good signing to him as we were with Gavin.  The only one I do consistently is "more" and "all done" and he has picked up on the "more" but uses it in more than one way.  Anytime he wants something he will stare at what he wants or point and then sign "more."  Today he signed "more" while he cried by my feet looking up at me wanting me to pick him up.  So, we need to fine tune the sign thing but as my mom says, he doesn't talk but he certainly communicates.

GAVIN

Today was our first ever parent-teacher conference.  We met with Gavin's teacher to go over the assessments they had done over the first week and to see how he was adjusting.  The teacher showed us a self-portrait that Gavin drew when she asked him to and he drew his face-  a circle with eyes, nose, mouth and hair.  That's it. No body.  This is consistent with the drawings he's done at home, he never draws a body.  If he elaborates more than a face, he skips the trunk and just draws floating arms and legs.  That's just his style.
The teacher also showed us his writing sample and said he's doing really well.  When I looked at it, I thought man- did he know this was an assessment?  because it was probably the best writing he's done, all on the line, the same size, and the A did not look like a 3 sided box with a line in the middle.
The gave all the kids a standardized assessment that had a name I had not heard before.  The total points possible were 100 and Gavin scored 99 so there are no concerns academically.  The teacher told us, "I know you know this but I just wanted to let you know that he showed us he knows" because sometimes children perform really well for parents but are not comfortable in the school setting and won't perform as well for the teacher.  Gavin tested about a year ahead on all the components.  While Gavin may be ahead academically he still has a lot of maturity/emotional growing up to do.  This past week he started crying when it was time for me to drop him off.  There was also an incident where he bit another boy. Why?  Because Gavin wanted to wash his hands first.  We had a long talk about this at home and we talked to the teacher about it.  She thought we handled it well.  We had him made the boy a card saying he was sorry for biting him and she said it was great because it allowed him to think about what happened and put his feelings on paper.  I'm still upset he did that.  I told the teacher that this behavior baffles me because I typically associate biting, pushing, etc. to children who are not able to communicate well and clearly that's not the case with Gavin.  She did say that  he could be frustrated not because he can't communicate but because other kids are not as verbal and he may not be getting the response he expects.  This sort of makes sense based on other experiences we've observed with him.  He does hate when people don't answer him.  But he knows better than to be mean to others.  He, himself, tells us when he's "bad" at school so he is very aware of his actions which just makes it more upsetting.  But the teacher was very reassuring and told us that this will all work itself out.
This school uses a combination of group learning and individual tasks.  The teacher mentioned that Gavin does really well in the small groups they've set up.  Nick doesn't like that they start "tracking" the kids this early because the small groups are based on kids that are "alike."  Ms. Sandy said Gavin is excited about group work and stays focused but she noticed that he didn't like individual work time as much.  She said Gavin tends to look at other kids and want what they have or are doing, etc. This doesn't surprise me at all.  This is the way he acts with Liam and anytime he feels a sense of inequity.  They just started the rotations of groups/individual work last week so the teacher said it might be a little off until the  kids get used to it.
We did let the teacher know that we are really more concerned about Gavin's emotional adjustment than academics at this point.  Our goal for this year is for Gavin to learn to respect and be kind to the other kids, enjoy school and want to go back each day.

Well- that's all for now.