At-Home Developmental Therapy
Updated August 30, 1998

Abby is currently 8 months old, she is developmentally responding at about the 4 month level. (better in some areas)

Baby massage - We have been doing this therapy since she was 3 months old. We took a class to learn it and will be adding a reference for this soon.

At home, we have focused mainly on sitting and holding herself up on her forearms. In the past two weeks she has been holding herself up nicely on her forearms and she can now sit with someone supporting her pelvis.

For fine motor work, we have been concentrating on grabbing objects and holding them. A week ago we found out that she was slightly far sighted (-4.5), which explains a lot about her not reaching for object that are close to her. She does grab for objects now as long as they are moving or making noise in front of her, and though she may not be able to focus 100% on the object, she is tracking well at fairly close distances now, and has always tracked well on distant objects.

We have been introducing cereal and baby foods, but she currently is only tolerating about a tablespoon per sitting. Her main diet is formula. We started trying to get her to take other liquids besides formula, but we were not sussessful, so we decided to only work on one thing at a time, so we chose soft foods.

We are doing water work with her also. The water seems to relax her very well. We are currently working on splashing and kicking, and tolerating water on her face and going under.

We are working on desensitizing her to other stimuli by blowing gently in her face, holding her upside-down briefly, moving her side to side, giving her objects with different textures, and giving her very small tastes of foods we may be eating. We just started working on using toothettes and a rubber oral brush to stimulate her gums, cheeks, and palette. We also play a variety of sounds around her such as whistling, classical music, children singing, etc.

Abby goes almost everywhere with Cathy. We try to expose her to as many experiences as we can. She has already been to a farm and a petting zoo. She goes on walks and visits lots of people with us.