Neurodevelopmental Evaluation

We had a very long but fruitful weekend. We left the house a few minutes before 5:00am on Friday and drove about 12 hours to Modesto, California. The kids were amazingly good and really enjoyed our surprise of a dual screen DVD player for the car! We only have one set of child-size headphones, so the kids were trading off and on with those while the other one was left to keep pushing them up on their ears. I tried to improvise with a pair of socks (which had us all cracking up every time we looked at her), but it didn't work too well. Another set of kid-size headphones is definitely on the list to buy!


The kids were thrilled to see Gramie was already at the hotel waiting for us. As usual she had brought all kinds of goodies for the kids (and for Mommy and Daddy). She took us out to a nice dinner that night, and then we went back to the hotel for baths and bedtime. Ryan fell asleep fairly quickly, but Abby didn't get to sleep until after 11:00! She was WAY overstimulated, and it takes her a long time to settle down when she's like that.


We got up and took Abby to her appointment at 8:00am on Saturday. Abby warmed up to Marilee very quickly and was very cooperative during the whole evaluation. As we expected, she is hyposensitive in her tactile, proprioreceptive and vestibular senses. We also learned that she uses her peripheral vision much more than her central vision (this doesn't have to do with 20/20 sight but with how the brain functions in conjunction with the eyes. She has very good vision.), which was a bit surprising and cleared up a few things for me, namely, that she doesn't make eye contact even when I am holding her face in my hand and trying to force her to look me in the eye!



We were then asked to wait about 30 minutes while she put together our INP (individual neurodevelopment plan). We were given about 4 1/2 hours of activities to do five days a week (some are seven days) with her. It was also recommended that we have an assesment done and get her on some mineral and electrolyte supplements to help with her metabolic issues. We got back to the hotel at about noon, so the whole evaluation took about four hours.

We were a bit overwhelmed, but after reading through some of the handouts and watching some of the videos provided, we felt much better. It was so wonderful to have my mom there to watch Ryan during the eval and to play with both of them while we processed the information and planned out how we would implement everything!

After lunch we went to the Great Valley Museum that turned out to be much better than it looked on the outside and was definitely worth the $3 per family admission price! The kids had a great time looking at all the taxidermied animals and playing with the hands-on stuff for the kids, as well as seeing some real snakes, frogs, tarantulas, etc.


We had another yummy dinner, and headed back to the hotel for bed. Abby again had trouble getting to sleep, but Mommy and Daddy had no trouble whatsoever. After breakfast we thanked Gramie, said goodbye to her and left for home at about 9:30am. It was a VERY long drive home. It took 14 hours due to needing to stop more and to a big mess we needed to stop and clean up in the van (can you guess who made the mess?), so we pulled into the garage at about 11:30pm and crashed into bed. Abby didn't even fall asleep until after we left Salem (which is only an hour from home), and Ryan didn't fall asleep till Scappoose (10 minutes from home)!