Assessment at Dr. Saunders' Office

This morning Ryan had his pre-Unity assessment with Dr. Saunders, the pediatric neuropsychologist. Yep, I said pre-Unity, even though we've already started.  They wanted to book Ryan on January 26, but that was the day we were having his third birthday party, so it didn't work for us.  Anyway, the point is that The Summit Centre wanted to have him assessed before Unity, and then we'll go again within a week or so after Unity is done, to see what gains Ryan might have made during the program.

We actually only saw Dr. Saunders for about 2 minutes, and it was one of his assistants or another doctor (?) who did the actual assessment. Everyone involved seemed very kind and showed great interest in Ryan. Of course, he greeted them with his cutest smiles and some good eye contact, which won them over right away!

Today's assessment involved all the basic areas: fine and gross motor skills; language/communication skills (expressive=his attempts to communicate with us, and receptive=his understanding what we're communicating to him); learning skills; daily living/functional skills; play skills; behaviour and emotional regulation, etc. I know I'm not using the proper terms for all of this, but you get the idea. 

Ryan got upset when he realized we'd brought him in to do some "work."  I think he recognized the set-up and the activities; a lot of it was very similar to things we've been doing at Summit Centre this week as we've worked to determine some baselines for Ryan (a baseline is the current level that a target behavior occurs prior to intervention). He wanted to mouth everything (as usual!) and kept turning his back on the lady doing the assessment. I know that's his way of saying, "I'm done with you." Luckily, I had brought some little toys from home and we let him mouth those, and that soothed him a bit. But after about 30 minutes of sitting in a chair and continual testing, Ryan had enough. He climbed down off the chair and wandered away, and started really crying. So, we moved into Dr. Saunders' office to finish my portion of the assessment (just answering a bunch of questions: the Vineland-II Adaptive Behaviour Scale--been there, done that before). There were some nice, comfy couches in there, so I tried to lay Ryan down and give him a bottle. However, he was so upset he wouldn't settle.  I tried letting him explore (wander), rocking him, bouncing him, tickling him, and just letting him lay down, but he would only settle for a minute, then be crying again. 

But, as always, as soon as I put our coats on, he calmed down!  Ohhh, that little stinker. He sure gets happy when it's time to leave somewhere people expect effort from him! He was cooing and laughing as we went out the door.  Well, Mr. Ryan, he's just going to have to learn that crying isn't going to get him out of doing the work. He might get a few minutes to calm down and have a break, but we aren't leaving until we get what we need, and he completes his goals for the day.  It's tough to see him upset, but he needs to be pushed out of his comfort zone.  I have seen little changes in him with just one week; imagine what we'll see after 12 weeks of persistent effort! Even the lady who assessed him said she thinks he'll get so much out of Unity, and she can't wait to see what he'll have achieved when they see him again in 3 months, for the post-Unity assessment.