Gabriel’s exploratory and problem solving behavior has greatly improved from 8 months. At 8 months old, Gabriel was able to find a hidden object, as long as I didn’t wait too long or distract him in the middle of the search. At 12 months, we tried the object permanence test again. This time, Gabriel was able to find the object even after long delays and loved the game. I set up two hiding places for the object and hid it under one of the two covers repeatedly. When I switched it to the second hiding place, he no longer had the problem he had earlier of searching the more common of the two hiding places. I couldn’t even trick him by hiding it in my hand. Gabriel liked this game and wants to play it over and over. At 15 months, I noticed he often explores and studies things in his environment and performs simple little "experiments" with them. For example, he throws a ball against the wall repeatedly, varying the strength or angle of throw and happily watching how the ball rebounds. At 18 months, he showed signs of self awareness while looking in the mirror. He has begun using the word "me" a lot and wants to do things himself. He likes to explore the plants on the balcony and help me water them. Finally, at 19 months, Gabriel is able to model actions or words that he has seen or heard days before. Gabriel seems to become aware of basic categories, such as big or little, and blue or red because of the way he sorts his toys. And Gabriel is age-appropriate on tasks such as building a structure to model other structures and other spatial skills such as copying shapes, coloring within the lines and solving picture puzzles.
Gabriel’s temperament has also greatly improved. He has shown much more activity recently and is very interested in music. He often dances in rhythm to familiar music and tries to clap or sing along with songs that I sing or that are played on TV. We enjoy dancing or moving around together to music. Although Gabriel is still slow to warm up to new situations and people, when we give him time he usually comes around. It has been recommended that we spend more time in child playgroups in familiar settings to improve his sociability. His emotionality has vastly improved and we are very happy about this. While at 8 months Gabriel was very hard to soothe, he is now pretty cheerful during play sessions and only becomes irritable when another child becomes aggressive toward him. Gabriel himself is not very aggressive with other children unless another child tries to grab a toy from him and then he will resist. It has also been recommended that Gabriel continue to go to toddler play groups or daycare to develop his interaction skills further. His cooperation and self-control are very good is able to concentrate very well for short periods of time. We have been told that if this continues he will be more than ready for preschool-type activities and “group time”.
It seems that Gabriel’s temperament has been fairly stable in the last 18 months. I have observed mostly good tempered reactions to things. At 3 Months, Gabriel would smile at familiar people and toys and begun developing lots of cute little habits. At 8 Months, my partner and I were able to spend a lot of time in the evenings and on weekends playing with Gabriel. He seemed to be having a lot of fun! He did have some difficulty at 9 months when he became difficult to soothe if upset. He would sometimes accept my embraces and sometimes pushes me away. He also experienced the typical emotional reactions for his age, such as fear of total strangers and separation anxiety. But at 12 months he seemed happier and when we had a party at our house Gabriel seemed very happy, regardless of whether he knew what we were celebrating or not. At 19 months, Gabriel is a pretty cheerful child.
To encourage Gabriel to broad his contact with other people we have been taking him to visit grandma and grandpa's house on weekends, and we all have a great time. Gabriel loves to play with their gentle dog, and gets a lot of attention from grandma and grandpa. I have also been encouraging his communication skills by asking him questions that require more than a “yes” or “no” answer and pointing out new objects and naming them.
I am very surprised and glad that Gabriel is turning out to be such an intelligent and happy child! I love that he is always exploring his surroundings and doing little experiments. I did have the impression that I was doing some things wrong with Gabriel at first. His difficulty to soothe and refusal of my embraces were concerning. But I have been pleasantly surprised with his progress. I am still a little worried about his level of communication skills, but with work I am sure they will improve.
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2 comments:
Hey my baby, Kylee is very similar to your's. She is progressing pretty good too but she doesn't have great rhythm. The doctor also encouraged us to take her out more often to play groups. She is more attached to me cause my partner works.
I can say i have similar situations with my boy. He seemed to have trouble at first interacting with people but at 19 months he was open to talk and be around just about anyone. And i was also told to get him more involved with groups and activities to help him learn.
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