By the numbers

Humans have a way of making life understandable - one way is to use numbers - what's your date of birth?  how old are you? how much do you weigh? what time does the show begin? When babies are born it's all about the numbers - you remember how long labor lasted, the time of birth, the weight, length, and Apgar number.  It is all by the numbers. 

Once the baby is born, people can tell you how many weeks or months he/she is.  Who knew that we counted the early years in months?  He's 18 months (you mean a year and a half?) She'll be 24 months in a couple of weeks (you mean 2 years old?) We use the numbers to help us put things into perspective.

Numbers take on meaning in each different context - that's how we do it so that we can make meaning of our universe.  As you're enjoying the baby's development, you start looking for different developmental cues and clues - is she rolling over yet? Is he standing yet? She has started crawling. Girl, you know that boy is waving and reaching for things? The focus shifts from numbers to actions (things the baby can do).  Truth is, the doctor is looking at numbers - weight, height, circumference of head, temperature.

Turns out, there are other numbers that you sometimes don't get until your numbers are low (or too high). What do I mean?  when we got our first formal developmental assessment, I knew something was not quite right when the request "put the block on your nose" was followed by a blank stare.  I didn't really know how far behind we were until I had the numbers.

At 36 months (otherwise known as 3 years old), we were demonstrating skills at 18 months and 24 months (that's a year and a half and 2 years).  Translation - language and cognitive skills were almost 2 years behind.  It's all in the numbers. In my universe, she looked fine.  She was eating, playing, she new over 100 words.  True, she didn't produce original speech but every child develops at a different pace.  But I didn't know the numbers!!

Our first set of numbers brought home the stark reality of the scope of the problem: at 36 months - auditory comprehension was at the 21-month level; expressive language was at the 20-month level; and total language was at the 19-month level.  We were more than a year behind.

When assessed at 50 months (4 years and 2 months), she was as much as 20 months behind in the area of picture vocabulary.  That's where they show you pictures and you say what it is.  Hearing and seeing the numbers was worrisome.  The numbers let me know what work we had to do.  But, in the months ahead, when the numbers started springing forward they let me know how much progress we were making in the various areas of assessment.  Show me the numbers!!!!