Spontaneous supination (palm up) with both hands. My girls were playing with cherry blossom petals, and Mia offered her palms up to receive the petals from her sister. Supination has been one of Mia’s goals since she was an infant as she had a stroke at birth. Many people with hemiplegia struggle to turn the palm of their affected hand upwards. In the picture above, Mia is 5 years old and Zoe is 8 years old.
And, because this is the season when the cherry tree blooms in our garden, we use it every year as a way of marking time. So, in 2018, my girls are now 11 and 8. You may notice in the picture below that Zoe is as tall as the cherry tree. And, Mia has both of her arms in a relaxed position by her sides. This was not always easy for her as she used to frequently hold her right arm in a contracted and pronated position with both her elbow and wrist flexed.
This is one in my May streak of posts to raise awareness about pediatric stroke. If you’re able, please contribute to my fundraising efforts which will help support Children’s Hemiplegia and Stroke Association, an organization that has given our family much support and information.
This morning after Mia’s Friday morning occupational therapy (OT) session, I had her Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting with the therapist while our au pair took the girls to school. It was really easy and straightforward and Mia will continue to receive OT for another year once a week for 30 minutes at the public preschool. A few days ago, I wrote about my Vision Statement which is part of this process.
The goals in the IEP, drafted by the occupational therapist and jointly discussed and revised, are required to be extremely specific and quantifiable even when a lot of interpretation is needed to see if Mia is meeting the objectives.
Her overall goal is:
Mia will demonstrate improved functional upper extremity and hand skills as evidenced by the following objectives.
Here are some of her new objectives:
1) Mia will demonstrate improved fine motor control and dexterity as noted by her ability to utilize pincer grasp patterns, with her right hand, to independently string four 1″ beads, on 75% of opportunities. [Needs to be edited to specify that the beads be in Mia’s right hand as it’s easier for her to put the string in her right hand.]
2) Mia will demonstrate improved bilateral and fine motor control as noted by her ability to complete a 2-4 step origami paper project, demonstrating 1/3″ accuracy and precision of each fold on 75% of opportunities.
3) Mia will demonstrate improved active range of motion of her forearm as noted by her ability to achieve at least 55 degrees of supination [palm up] during functional tasks, on 75% of opportunities.
4) Mia will effectively incorporate the use of both hands to complete a multi-step fine motor project requiring coloring, cutting and/or gluing, following a visual model of the project, on 75% of opportunities.
I am really happy with these objectives. They are realistic, creative, challenging, and appropriate for Mia who will be turning four in less than a month.
I’m also happy that now that she’s already on an IEP and just continuing it, there’s no need for a break in services. She will continue to see our awesome occupational therapist through late June when the school year ends, and she’ll resume again in September. This is in contrast to last spring and summer when we had a 5 month break in services because her occupational therapist through early intervention moved in April so Mia lost out on her last few months of Early Intervention services and the school-based IEP services didn’t start until September. Only kids who would show a greater than typical regression over the summer qualify for summer services. All kids are expected to regress some over the summer which baffles me, at least at this age. I hope to see Mia progress over the summer.
And, I’m happy that we have a wonderful occupational therapist to work with Mia every Friday morning. When I was first approaching this world of the IEP, I wasn’t at all sure how it would be and I was reserving my options to decline services and figure out another way if it wasn’t working for Mia or for me. For example, she could go to outpatient occupational therapy, which our health insurance would cover for some number of sessions per year. Logistically, that’d be more complicated, requiring more driving and scheduling and copays. I’m glad we don’t have to do that right now!
Sadly, I don’t get to observe Mia’s OT sessions anymore. Here’s an old video from January 2012 when she was 2.5 in her junior preschool classroom. Notice how well she is connecting the elephants and how she uses both hands to do it. Every day, her teachers would put out activities on that round table that were good fine motor practice. They took suggestions from me and from Mia’s therapists through Early Intervention but they also know that what’s good for a child with any kind of special needs is often good for all the children in the class.
