Physical Therapy Evaluation

**This is yet another long wordy post without pictures, sorry!**

On Thursday, Owen's service coordinator called to follow up on his 2 year checkup. She said the physical therapist actually had an open slot that morning and could they come and do Owen's evaluation then. We didn't realize that it would get done so quickly, but were thankful for it.

To say Owen was uncooperative would be understatement. He was in some kind of funk that morning and threw more temper tantrums than I could count. He hated being forced to do her activities and to be put in certain positions. She said that based on the evaluation, Owen's motor skills are coming in around 16 months old, putting him 8 months behind. Things Owen should be doing that he is not: walking up the stairs holding onto the wall, walking on his knees, kicking and throwing a ball 5 ft, stand on one foot, or trying jumping. She also thought that Owen had some low muscle tone in his lower leg/ankle area, which could be causing some balance issues. This could explain why it took him later to walk. He also tends to lock his knees and kind of waddle walk instead of straight out run. Because he is 8 months behind, the PT suggested that he receive therapy services, at least for a few months, to help him catch up.

We agreed to therapy and he will probably start in 2 weeks. His 6 month IFSP (document stating his goals) review was already scheduled for Oct. 20th so it will be a great time to write him new speech and physical therapy goals.

People have asked me how I feel about it and to be honest I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I am happy to have had the evaluation and to know now how to help him. On the other, I feel like in some way this is my fault, like I haven't done enough physical activity with him. Did I carry him up the stairs too much? Did I not play ball with him enough?

To get more answers, I called our pediatrician today to ask her some questions. This is the 2nd evaluator to mention low muscle tone (speech pathologist mentioned him having low muscle tone in his mouth). I asked her what could be causing this and is there something we can be doing besides therapy to help, for instance in his diet. She was very reassuring and told me that in all of her exams of him, his muscle tone may be a little low but nothing extreme. He does not have hypotonia, which we would have seen much earlier and he would be way farther behind. She said he just has low muscle memory and he just needs to work his muscles more. After a couple months of therapy, if we do not see any progress then we may need to do some further testing to see if it's something metabolic that could be causing it. She doesn't feel like it is though, because we would have seen issues like his thyroid much earlier. (Plus I believe his former pediatrician checked for that earlier when we had a full blood workup done and all the results came back clear.)

So now we start physical therapy. My prayer is that both therapies will be beneficial to him and he will catch up very quickly. I also pray that he will be cooperative and willing to learn because he is not always so willing with us. We have found that he can be stubborn and lazy, doing only what he wants to do when he wants to do it. Please pray for him..